xAI is a concrete example of this. During the initial LLM explosion, X locked down its previously public APIs and data sources. Simultaneously, xAI is investing massively in building its private data hoard and compute infrastructure. Probably a similar case with Meta.
"Data for me but not for thee"
MCP is only getting the light of day, arguably, because of LLM "one trick ponies" like OpenAI and Anthropic, who do benefit from MCP amplifying their value proposition. As that business model continues to fizzle out and lose/subordinate to the AI integrators (Google, Microsoft, xAI?), MCP will probably fizzle out as well.
Exactly. Consumer tech has been locking down APIs and actively working against interop since the advertising business model became dominant. Web 2.0 is the most obvious example, but there are plenty more.
Look, you don’t even own your own contacts on social media sites. If you access Google from an atypical browser you will get fingerprinted, captchad and rejected. Anti-scraping, anti fraud, paywalls, even lawsuits because you’re using ”our” APIs (see oracle).
It’s not the tech, it’s the business model. It’s adversarial, it’s a Mexican standoff. Doesn’t matter how good the MCP spec is, it’s not gonna go anywhere with consumer apps. As long as the economy is based on ads, your B2C company needs a sidebar to show ads (or in rare cases, subscriptions). You’re not gonna make money from providing a free API.
"Data for me but not for thee"
MCP is only getting the light of day, arguably, because of LLM "one trick ponies" like OpenAI and Anthropic, who do benefit from MCP amplifying their value proposition. As that business model continues to fizzle out and lose/subordinate to the AI integrators (Google, Microsoft, xAI?), MCP will probably fizzle out as well.