The Next Internet Evolution
For most of the history of the Internet, it's been a tool built by and for humans. A lot of effort has been spent on how to make the Internet easier to use. First there was the browser, then the search engine, SaaS, smartphones and finally apps. Yes, this is a gross simplification, but a useful one to help understand where we are going next.
The browser made navigating the internet less complicated. Search engines allowed us to find the proverbial needle-in-the-haystack and became the backbone of online marketing. SaaS made delivering sophisticated software solutions scalable to businesses of all sizes. Smartphones made the internet portable and ubiquitous. And finally apps made it easy to address every conceivable use case from sharing silly videos to instant food gratification.
AI is changing all of this. We are evolving from the Human Internet to the AI Internet. On the Human Internet we developed sophisticated software to make it easier to use. On the AI Internet we will have machine-built agents that complete tasks on our behalf. Today’s AI Internet takes the form of LLMs that are handy creative and research interns. But with OpenAI Operator, Google Project Astra and Apple Intelligence, tomorrow’s AI Internet will be replete with agents, mediating online activities on our behalf.
We are already starting to see the impact of this transition in SEO. Google is aggressively cannibalizing its search business in favor of Generative Search. The impact is that Search Engine Results Pages are rapidly evolving from a jumping off point to the right parts of the Internet to the one-and-done destination for your query. Recent research found that nearly 48-percent of Google SERPs can include an AI Overview. This pushes links below the fold in favor of a summary of what's below the fold, eliminating the need to scroll down and click through to the sites listed.
Google’s AI is interpreting your intent and serving you a synopsis that is likely good enough. It is going beyond curating the best links for you to intermediating your interaction with the Internet. When it’s right, it’s a great user experience.
This completely changes the business model of the media businesses that used to benefit downstream from Google. Those businesses monetize that traffic through advertising, subscription sales or some combination of both. They are going to have to rethink their business models and value propositions for the AI Internet (we can help here). This is like the Napster moment for the text based web. The music business model evolved from selling physical media to streaming, live performance and merch.
The online content and media business is probably due for a cycle of disruption to weed out sites that are more noise than signal. What happens as we turn to AIs for help with product discovery and buying decisions? This will go beyond disruption and fundamentally change the nature of buying and selling. More on this in the next post.
