Commentary warns: AI agents could become the internet's new gatekeepers
Jared Sine, chief strategy & legal officer at GoDaddy, warns in a commentary for Tech Policy Press that AI chatbots and agents are replacing search engines as the main interface to the internet and could become economic gatekeepers if they favor paid partners.
Jared Sine, chief strategy & legal officer at GoDaddy, warns in a commentary published on 11 November 2026 on Tech Policy Press that AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude) and upcoming AI agents (for example Muse from Meta) are gradually replacing traditional web browsing — people ask them for product recommendations, news summaries, and even future tasks like booking a flight or ordering groceries. According to the author, these systems moreover will not just recommend but will act directly on behalf of the user.
Sine points out that licensing agreements between major AI companies and news organizations already today ensure preferential display of certain sources in AI responses. According to a study by Bain & Company, by 2030 AI agents could initiate, influence, or complete purchases worth hundreds of billions of dollars within US e-commerce. If AI companies were to favor paid partners or companies with licensing agreements in their recommendations, according to the author a small number of platforms could gain the role of economic gatekeepers between consumers and the rest of the internet — companies would then compete for placement inside closed AI ecosystems similarly to how they previously competed for shelf space in stores or visibility in app stores.
The author recalls that the internet avoided similar lock-in in the past thanks to open technical standards, especially the DNS system, which allowed anyone to register a domain and be reachable without having to pay browsers for discoverability. As a possible solution, he proposes the creation of an open "Agent Name Service", which according to him would work similarly to DNS, but for AI agents — it would allow companies to be findable by AI systems across platforms without having to enter into agreements with individual dominant players. He mentions existing open protocols — the Agent2Agent protocol from Google and the Model Context Protocol from Anthropic, both now under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation — as examples of the direction in which agent interoperability could further develop.
Why it matters
This is a commentary by a single author, not an announced policy or a specific product measure, so the described scenario is for now a warning and a recommendation, not a factual state of affairs. For companies dependent on online visibility (e-commerce, publishers), however, it indicates a direction in which competition for placement in AI agents' responses could develop — similarly to the earlier competition for positions in search engines or app stores. For individuals, the relevant point is the warning that AI agents' recommendations when shopping or booking may reflect paid partnerships rather than an independent comparison of offers.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
Recommendations from AI chatbots and agents when shopping, booking, or choosing services may be influenced by paid partnerships and licensing agreements, not only by independent comparison of offers.
For a business
According to the author, companies dependent on online visibility may in the future compete for placement inside closed AI ecosystems similarly to how they previously competed for a spot in search engines or app stores, which is relevant to marketing and sales strategy.
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Event sources
only one source so far · 1 publisher, 1 independent. We count feeds from the same owner only once.