It’s good to see a new fresh push for protocols and interop. However, I don’t think it will do the thing we hope for, for non-technical reasons.<p>During Web 2.0, we saw similar enthusiasm. Instead of AI agents or blockchain, every modern company had an API exposed. For instance, Gmail- and Facebook chat was usable with 3p client apps.<p>What killed this was not tech, but business. The product wasn’t say social media, it was ad delivery. And using APIs was considered a bypass of funnels that they want to control. Today, if you go to a consumer service website, you will generally be met with a login/app wall. Even companies that charge money directly (say 23&me ad an egregious example) are also data hoarders. Apple is probably a better example. There’s no escape.<p>The point is, protocols is the easy part. If the economics and incentives are the same as yesterday, we will see similar outcomes. Today, the consumer web is adversarial between provider ”platforms”, ad delivery, content creators, and the products themselves (ie the people who use them).