home office scene, photorealistic, through the window we see a person playing with their kids in the backyard, in the foreground a robot uses a laptop to order a new baseball glove

You Built a Site for Users. They Sent an Agent Instead.

SURFING THE WEB IS OVER. The next era of the web is agent-to-agent. If your content can’t be read, trusted, and acted on—it’s out.

A new browser war is underway — OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are turning browsers into orchestrators of intelligent agents that complete tasks, make decisions, and move on.

“Find a vendor,” “Book a hotel,” “Compare these three platforms and send the best option.” The agent will handle all of it—search, filter, read reviews, check availability, fill forms, and return with a result. Few users visit a page. The page is read, acted on, and summarized by agents.

That changes how your site gets found, how your product is understood, and how decisions are made. SEO won’t drive traffic the same way. Marketing copy may never be seen by a human. Your brand’s tone of voice, trust signals, and structured data will now shape what gets passed from agent to agent—and what gets shown to the human at the end.

Agents are deciding what to say about your business—based on what they can parse and verify from your site. If your message gets distorted in that handoff, you may not get a second chance.

OpenAI: Replacing Browsing with Task Execution

OpenAI isn’t updating the browser—it’s removing it. Their upcoming product reimagines the entire experience around a single interface: the prompt. Ask for something, and it gets done. No URLs, no tabs, no visible flow. Just an agent executing your intent.

At the core is Operator, OpenAI’s internal system for completing multi-step tasks. It routes requests through live data, APIs, and internal memory. Combined with the company’s Rockset acquisition, the browser becomes less a viewing tool and more a transactional surface for users to express goals and receive outcomes.

This is a direct challenge to traditional navigation. You don’t explore the web—you submit a task and get a result. For brands, this means your site is parsed and acted on without ever being viewed. If your data isn’t clear, current, and machine-readable, you’re out of the loop.

Here’s a breakdown of upcoming and current AI features:

OpenAI Browser (Coming Soon)
Platform: Chromium-based
Interface Paradigm: Chat-first, agent-native
Current Status: Launching in weeks (as of July 2025)

  • Built-in Operator agent to handle tasks (form-filling, booking, purchasing)
  • Replaces navigation with conversational goal-completion
  • No traditional search interface; uses a ChatGPT-style prompt window
  • Likely integrates with user’s OpenAI account, memory, and possibly wallet
  • Designed to minimize page-hopping, increase task resolution in-chat
  • Emphasis on reducing steps between intention → result
  • Built to capture and utilize browsing data within OpenAI’s ecosystem

Google Chrome: Embedding Agents into the Familiar

Google isn’t throwing out Chrome—it’s embedding agents into it. Gemini is now a persistent presence across search and workspace tools, and Chrome is gradually becoming an agentic environment without changing its familiar skin.

Project Mariner adds task-level intelligence: it can fill forms, click buttons, and summarize content mid-flow. Agentspace connects these actions across your tabs, history, and Workspace context. At Google I/O 2024, the company positioned Chrome not as a browser upgrade, but as an interface for distributed agent memory.

This approach is slower but broader. Chrome remains the default for billions, so changes will roll out incrementally. But even now, these features are altering how users engage with the web—doing more without clicking more. For builders, it means your site needs to respond to invisible actions from intelligent agents operating inside the browser.

Here’s a breakdown of upcoming and current AI features:

Google Chrome (Active + Expanding AI Integration)
Platform: Chrome (70%+ market share)
Interface Paradigm: Gradual AI augmentation
Core Model: Gemini 2.0 (multi-modal, tool-using)

  • AI Mode in Chrome Search powered by Gemini (available via Search Labs)
  • Project Mariner: experimental agent that fills forms, summarizes, and navigates websites autonomously
  • Agentspace: Chrome-embedded tool for enterprise agents tied to Workspace and Search
  • Marketing Advisor agent (B2B feature for campaign guidance in-browser)
  • Focus on integrated AI experiences vs. a new browser experience
  • Likely to evolve into persistent multi-agent support (consumer + enterprise)

Perplexity Comet: Building the Research-First Agent Browser

Comet is Perplexity’s bet on speed, clarity, and directness. Instead of sending users to content, it extracts what they need and shows it immediately—backed by citations. A sidebar copilot lets users ask questions in real-time, referencing what’s on screen or what they’ve seen before.

Comet isn’t trying to mimic traditional browsing. It’s built for people who need answers quickly and can’t waste time wading through ads, banners, or slow-loading pages. The model focuses on extraction, compression, and task execution, using Perplexity’s own answer engine to drive it all.

This is where agentic UX shines: the browser feels like a research partner, not a tool. For businesses, that means your site needs to be a reliable source. Clear metadata, scannable formats, and original insights get picked up. Vague claims, messy layouts, or generic copy won’t.

Here’s a breakdown of upcoming and current AI features:

Perplexity Comet (Launched July 2025)
Platform: Custom AI-native browser
Interface Paradigm: Sidebar + conversational agent overlay

  • Real-time AI sidebar for asking questions about any page
  • Can perform web actions: navigate, summarize, extract, link, answer
  • Direct integration with Perplexity’s answer engine (search alternative)
  • Lightweight browsing—built for mobile and desktop research tasks
  • Minimalist UI with fast page previews and summarization tools
  • Aimed at researchers, students, and professionals needing “instant expertise”

Strategic Implications for Builders

This shift is not theoretical. It changes how your product gets found, understood, and chosen. Pages designed to guide users—from landing flows to pricing modals—might be invisible to the new web. Agents don’t click through funnels. They take what they need and leave.

So your job now includes designing for agent legibility. That means clean schema, structured summaries, and clear relationships between parts of your content. Every card, table, FAQ block, and product spec should be independently readable by software. Agents need to parse and act without guessing.

You also need to preserve meaning. Brand voice, tone, and clarity aren’t optional—they’re part of how agents evaluate trust. If your tone sounds like every other AI-generated page, your brand gets flattened. If your information is vague or buried, it gets skipped.

Agents talk to each other. One pulls structured data from your site. Another composes a summary for the end user. In between, your story is retold by systems. If your site doesn’t guide that retelling, someone else’s narrative may win.

What to Watch For

OpenAI is building a closed loop. As more users ask ChatGPT to do things, fewer pages get loaded. Your site might still be the source—but not the destination.

Google has scale, but it’s moving carefully. Its agentic features are layered inside Chrome, not replacing it. That gives it time—but also slows down real change. It’s unclear how far it will push agent autonomy.

Perplexity is smaller, but sharper. Comet is already changing how professionals do research. Their focus on persistent agents, memory, and mobile-first tasks could carve out a serious wedge—especially in workflows where accuracy and speed matter.

What This Means for You

You’re no longer building just for people. You’re building for their software—agents that read your site, decide what matters, and present it back in their own words.

Your brand won’t win by standing out visually. It’ll win by being readable, clear, and trusted in a format agents can parse. That includes hierarchy, metadata, and structured facts. It also includes tone and consistency. If agents trust your data and your voice, they’ll carry it forward. If not, they’ll replace it.

Make every page serve two audiences: the human, and the agent who gets there first.

Because soon, the agent will be the one making the decisions.