The Browser Wars Are Back, and They're Going to Fundamentally Change the Web
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The Browser Wars Are Back, and They're Going to Fundamentally Change the Web
It’s been a long time since the early browser wars of the late '90s and early 2000s. That all felt very settled a long time ago. But the web is undergoing a fundamental shift in 2025 that has reignited the browser wars. The web’s transformation into an applications platform isn’t new. It’s been building for years. What’s new is AI, which has dramatically accelerated the changes and thrown open the doors of competition.
The canary in the coal mine for me was the slowing of innovation on the App Store, which coincided with the rise of interesting, pro-quality, web-first apps like Figma and Notion. There are countless other examples now, but it’s been clear for a long while that the economics and policies of the App Store, combined with the expediency of addressing multiple platforms via the web, have shifted the center of gravity of the app universe in favor of the web.