Despite a wave of new AI-powered browsers from companies like OpenAI, nearly all are built on Google's Chromium engine. This stifles deep innovation and competition at the web's foundational layer, creating a monoculture with an illusion of choice.

In an AI-driven ecosystem, data and content need to be fluidly accessible to various systems and agents. Any SaaS platform that feels like a "walled garden," locking content away, will be rejected by power users. The winning platforms will prioritize open, interoperable access to user data.

The idea of a truly "open web" was a brief historical moment. Powerful, proprietary "organizing layers" like search engines and app stores inevitably emerge to centralize ecosystems and capture value. Today's AI chatbots are simply the newest form of these organizing layers.

Laws intended for copyright, like the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, are weaponized by platforms. They make it a felony to create software that modifies an app's behavior (e.g., an ad-blocker), preventing competition and user choice.

Content moderation laws are difficult and slow to administer. A better solution is requiring platforms to provide users with a simple file of their data and social graph, allowing them to switch services easily and creating real competitive pressure.

Tim Berners-Lee warns that as AI summarizes content and performs tasks for users, people will stop visiting websites directly. This breaks the flow of traffic and ad revenue that sustains countless online publishers and content creators.

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee argues that for AI to genuinely help manage your life, it needs secure access to your personal data in a "wallet," not just the public web. This enables a new class of user-centric applications that work for the individual.

The natural mechanics of network-based markets inherently lead to dominant players in search, social media, and browsers. This erodes the web's initial decentralized promise of "digital sovereignty" for individual users and creators.