AI's HTML Moment: Can MCP Become a True Open Standard?

In 1993, the web was a collection of disconnected protocols and services. HTML gave that fragmented landscape a common language.

AI infrastructure is at a similar point today. Models, tools, and data systems are powerful, but connecting them still requires expensive integration and ongoing maintenance. The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, offers a shared interface between those parts.

Interoperability alone does not guarantee that it will become a durable standard. The web succeeded partly because it enabled people to create linked content, producing network effects that made the standard more useful as adoption grew.

MCP needs to unlock a similarly valuable ecosystem. It also needs institutional neutrality. Its origin at Anthropic gives competing platforms a reason to resist it, extend it in incompatible directions, or promote alternatives.

That makes governance as important as technical design. The real question is whether MCP can become neutral infrastructure for an open agent ecosystem, or whether platform competition will fragment the layer before it matures.