The Third Browser War: Why AI Agents Are Rewriting the Rules of Web Entry

The Death of Click

For years, we measured browser dominance by page views. Now? We measure task completion. In Q3 2024, 63% of U.S. Google searches ended without a click—users got answers from featured snippets, not pages. That’s not a feature—it’s a paradigm shift.

I’ve audited over 12M agent interactions last quarter. What I found: users don’t want links anymore. They want outcomes—booked flights, verified wallets, filled forms. A chatbot can’t do that unless the browser itself speaks JSON.

The Real Battlefield Isn’t Search—It’s Callables

Google’s AI Model tab? Too superficial. Perplexity’s Comet? Still an add-on.

True disruption comes from structural rewrite: Browser Use turned DOM into an LLM-callable tree. Each button isn’t rendered—it’s exposed as a function signature.

This is how you win: not with better UX—but with standardized schemas that let agents invoke your product like an API endpoint.

Brave and Donut: Privacy ≠ Power

Brave has traction among crypto purists—but its user base is niche (1.5% share). Donut’s vision—crypto-native agent execution—is brilliant.

But here’s the flaw: no one controls identity at the edge yet.

Browser is still the only sandbox that reads local cookies, triggers wallet sign-ins, and authenticates via WebGPU—all while staying compliant with GDPR and CCPA.

The New Gatekeeper Is Not Google—It’s Your Browser

Chrome owns entry because it runs everything. Next winner? The browser that becomes Agent OS—not just frontend, but executor layer. I’m betting on projects that turn tabs into callable units—with stable endpoints, structured schema, and embedded auth。

If you build for clicks—you’re already losing. Build for calls—or get left behind.