No matter how determined OpenAI, Google, and Apple are to fight each other for AI market share, we have options to succeed with, between, and around them. This post is about “with.” Succeeding with the Everything Machines means feeding them the data they need now to grow their market share now. They have learned everything they can from historically open web content; now they will be reliant on partners to provide information that they could not readily crawl a year ago. They will also learn who the most effective  partners are and will build the habit of relying on them for as long as that partner performs. That is the opportunity.

As with everything we do professionally during massive Internet platform shifts, this is a high risk/high return opportunity. However, there is no clear way to play it safe. Inaction leads to irrelevance and loss of market share. There are multiple ways to succeed with the Everything Machines; those paths to success all rely on what training data you can offer them this year. You should have Four Goals and you need to get started now.

Goal #1: Determine your company’s AI starting point online and off.

Method: Assess your current AI consumer efficacy versus your competitors via an audit. Get your executives focused on the kind of information that matters to learning systems.

  • Build a SWOT analysis, one which includes new adjacent opportunities, to analyze how the Everything Machine’s domination of current Internet middlemen will affect enterprise revenue.
  • What partner and channel programs outside of those middlemen are likely to be affected?
  • Do we expect those partners to be aggressive enough in transforming their own businesses in this new AI environment?
  • What conversations is my brand showing up in today based on my legacy SEO?
  • What missing topics should the Company care about and which current ones are extraneous?
  • Tactically, which of our owned web pages and partner content should we immediately try to shine a spotlight on for the Everything Machine’s crawlers?

    • Goal #2: Engage with the current generation of AI crawlers, which is actionable today. The systems that provide the crawler with their data gathering assignments will shape the initial hordes of agents that will start appearing in a few months.

    Method: Hire or contract your way into understanding the data formats that the Everything Machines prefer.

  • Certain data formats clearly cause the AIs to overindex on (i.e. pay more attention to) the sites that publish them. Those file formats are far less expensive for the Everything Machines to process and include as updates; they are just acting in their own self interest.
  • Understanding the strategic goals of Google’s Navboost, which gathers a site’s clickstreams, is a great exercise for executive teams and one we are increasingly being asked to lead. As Google Gemini learns the statistical map of how humans navigate sites, that will become the starting point for how their Project Astra agents start navigating.
  • Be aware now of Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol at a high level. It is focused on the internals of large enterprises, not their consumer-facing systems, but it shares many characteristics of the other agent APIs which will launch shortly.

    • Goal #3: Engage with the agents from OpenAI and Google as soon as their developer interfaces are announced, likely in Q2 2025. They will seek to look inside your systems via any APIs that you have built over the last fifteen to twenty years. All of the nerds like me who yelled about API-first enterprises are finally about to have our moment of extreme value creation. #mashery

    Method: Gain an executive view into your APIs, public or private.

  • Understand which ones are the highest value to the Everything Machines and make the most aggressive possible decision about sharing it. Unlike the current crawler tactics, there will be some security around the information shared here, though PII will only be shareable in the Apple Intelligence case below.
  • Clean up your API documentation and evolve it into a direction easily consumable by the Everything Machines. What is obvious to use is not obvious to them, and sometimes _vice versa._
  • Have a talent plan; coding is getting more automated but it is nowhere near a panacea yet. As we’ve all suffered from in other Internet booms, the demand for humans who can write to the Everything Machines’ APIs will be intense. Get ahead of it.

    • Goal #4: For iOS app owners, be an early partner of Apple Intelligence to benefit from their need to minimize traffic to ChatGPT. Per my initial post, that means offering up your most precious data to gain market share fast. You know your best customers in your area of engagement better than anyone else.

    Method: Teach Apple Intelligence about that one customer on that one smartphone so they deliver you many similar smartphones.

  • The data formats advice above applies here too. Within the phone, Apple will seek data formats very similar to what the AI internet crawlers also prefer and for the same reasons.
  • Unearth your most valuable data, including PII in this singular case, and encapsulate that data in these on-phone AI formats.
  • The talent issue is also at least as critical here.

    • The emergence of Everything Machines presents an opportunity that businesses cannot afford to miss. With major players like OpenAI, Google, Apple, Meta, and Anthropic vying for dominance, the market is wide open in ways we haven’t seen since the original proliferation of search engines.

    The current landscape, with its abundance of Everything Machines, is advantageous for businesses  who are willing to adapt. These tech giants need a broad scope of specialized knowledge and expertise to succeed against each other. By collaborating with them and sharing your unique data and insights, you can leverage their consumer reach and position yourself for growth.

    It is essential to proactively engage with these companies and develop a strategic plan that benefits both parties. By providing them with the resources they need, we can tap into their vast user base and gain significant exposure for your business.