Beyond the web
In the last few months, I’ve tweeted a bunch about how I think AI will shape the future of browser.
I’ve finally put some of these thoughts into a longer-form post. The most important ideas can be summarized as follows:
Google is positioned to win the long-term battle for assistance because of their dominance at the browser layer. In the long run, it may be important for OpenAI, Anthropic etc… to build or buy a browser. Partnering with Safari + Firefox is an alternative.
An AI browser does more than just give users a persistent copilot. An AI browser lets users generate and transform content (among other AI superpowers). This is useful for various complex reasoning flows, e.g. creating documentation from disparate resources or a custom shopping catalog based on items from the user’s browser history.
The same things that make an AI browser useful for interacting with web content will make it useful for interacting with other forms of content. A next-gen e-reader is probably a subset of a next-gen browser.
There may be a “UX counterpositioning” argument for why incumbent browsers might not be able to pursue these ideas and why now it’s possible for a startup to break through.
Full post is here: https://www.peterzakin.com/beyond-the-web.html. As always, reach out to peter[at]upfront.com if you have thoughts on this. Even better if you’re actually building new browsers or AI workspaces….