The Open Markets Institute, a Washington-based anti-monopoly advocacy group, published a 71-page report on November 9, 2026 arguing that Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are positioned to extend their control of cloud, models, operating systems, browsers, search and social platforms into AI agents. The group points to control of distribution, data-driven lock-in and control over access and standards as the forces that could concentrate the market.
The report reserves its sharpest criticism for commerce protocols. It describes the Agentic Commerce Protocol as "open, but developed and controlled by OpenAI and Stripe," and calls Google's Universal Commerce Protocol an attempt to lock in merchants and their advertising. PPC Land reports that Google's UCP checkout help page did name Merchant Center and Google Pay as requirements, but did not make ad spending a condition. The report offers no measurement showing that Google's agent steers shoppers toward UCP merchants.
Open Markets asks US, European and other regulators for fiduciary-style loyalty duties, a rebuttable presumption of disloyalty, interoperability, fair and non-discriminatory access for rival agents (including equal access for merchants on dominant agents), independent agent certification modeled on UK Open Banking, and cloud divestment by Amazon, Google and Microsoft. None of these is law.
PPC Land notes the report contains no original data, concedes that consumer lock-in is low today, and contains errors, including Anthropic investment figures that differ between pages and a wrong launch date for OpenAI's Instant Checkout. None of the companies it criticizes is quoted responding.