Let’s talk about AI and what I’ve been calling the “DoorDash problem.” This is about to define the next battle in AI, and it might completely transform not only how you order a sandwich — but also how the entire internet economy works in general.
So what, exactly, is the DoorDash problem? Briefly, it’s what happens when an AI interface gets between a service provider, like DoorDash, and you, who might send an AI to go order a sandwich from the internet instead of using apps and websites yourself.
That would mean things like user reviews, ads, loyalty programs, upsells, and partnerships would all go away — AI agents don’t care about those things, after all, and DoorDash would just become a commodity provider of sandwiches and lose out on all additional kinds of money you can make when real people open your app or visit your website.
The DoorDash problem is not specific to DoorDash — it’s just the example I like to use because I think sandwich delivery is a funny proxy for the structure of the global economy. But “who owns the customer?” is a big problem for all of the service companies that came up in what you might call the App Store era: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Zocdoc, you name it.
I’ve been asking the CEOs of these companies about the DoorDash problem on Decoder for months now, because I’ve been predicting that eventually one of them is going to decide it doesn’t want to give up its customers to AI and try to block agents entirely.
Recently, my prediction came true — but it wasn’t a small player that decided to push back against AI; it was one of the biggest players of all. Earlier this month, Amazon sued Perplexity to try and prevent its AI powered Comet browser from shopping on Amazon.com, a move Perplexity has characterized as “bullying.”
So, it’s here: the first major front in the war over who gets to browse the web and who controls the economic experiences of the future has opened up. Now, it’s time for us to really dive deep into the DoorDash problem.
The sandwich delivery complex
Once upon a time, if you wanted to order a sandwich from your favorite local sandwich shop, you’d actually head over there and order at the counter, or make a phone call directly to the store. It was face-to-face interaction with another human being, and that’s basically what the entire economy looked like, outside of some mail order catalogs and QVC.
The famous dot-com bubble of the late 1990s was fueled by the belief that all of these sorts of interactions would happen on the internet — that instead of going in person or ordering over the phone, you’d visit websites to order sandwiches, or buy pet supplies, or have groceries delivered. The bet was that a huge part of the economy would move to the internet, and the companies that got there first would get huge and make everyone rich.
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