Why Browsers Became the New Entry Point, and What the Next One Is

Jiang Wu · 2025-05-30

*Originally published in Chinese on May 30, 2025.*

"Why browsers became the new entry point" is a false question, and it only became a true one after many AI applications picked this entry point up. By absolute coverage of applications on the PC side, the browser is undoubtedly the number one carrier on every platform. Surfing the web is the foundation of what users know and how they behave. The browser was always the first basis, or the first entry point, on the PC. AI applications built many plug-ins on browsers and started working the whole of browsing behavior. They satisfy a few conditions.

First, the user base is large. Second, no user education is needed. Third, the underlying infrastructure is fairly complete. Building new services on this framework has a much lower barrier for developers than building a new app and asking users to use it. So the browser has always been a new entry point, or a very important one.

Where is the next entry point?

The core question is not why the browser became a new entry point. It is what the next entry point will be.

By today's service logic, many basic browser functions still have to be called, and those functions are achieved to some extent through multi-window or multi-threaded tasks. There are currently a few routes: a cloud browser connects different computers in the cloud and outputs different services, or the browser opens different windows locally and connects different services. The principle is similar, and the engineering mechanisms differ. If in the future these principles and mechanisms no longer need multiple windows or the browser's own capability, and the server side instead calls different instructions after understanding the user's intent, that will certainly happen in the short term.

Once that happens, the entry point may not need a super app to carry it or a strong entry mechanism. It becomes the next landing point for users that has an open system and properties and can connect services. In the WeChat ecosystem that Chinese readers know well, the next key service system may be WeChat mini programs, or an input method keyboard, or even any window that can pass along links and pictures.

By openness and user habit, the options are still the entry points of today's super apps with open systems. And suppose, I only say suppose, that a service's final goal inside its own carrier is not to deliver results on the user's device at all, but only to take in demand and distribute it. Where would its access point be in the future? In an extreme case it could be a phone number: call it and just state your need.

The next entry point has three traits. First, convenience of input. Second, a fairly open access mechanism. Third, customizable ways to interact.

You smart readers have probably started writing business plans already.

Home · All articles · Topics · 简体中文