Recent technological history is marked by the promise of disintermediation. In the early days of the internet, there was a belief that the network would allow direct connections, where artists would converse with their fans without record labels, companies would sell to consumers without retailers, and ideas would circulate unfiltered. It was a libertarian, almost romantic ideal of a simpler and more transparent world. For a time, this vision seemed to take shape, but reality has reorganized itself around new intermediaries, as powerful as the old ones, although disguised as digital platforms.
Services like Uber, Mercado Livre, Instagram, and Amazon created closed ecosystems that facilitated interactions and transactions, but also established new layers between desire and its fulfillment. They were practical, efficient, and often unavoidable. The rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) consolidated a model in which technology presents itself as packaging, where an elegant interface encompasses the user's intention and translates it into action, but which, in the process, remains a barrier.
This model, however, is beginning to show signs of profound transformation. Three out of four companies (75%) plan to prioritize SaaS application backup operations as a critical requirement by 2028, a significant jump from the 15% recorded in 2024, according to Gartner. No matter how fluid an interface seems, it requires opening an application, typing, selecting, and navigating. Each micro-decision represents friction, and the accumulation of these small frictions has become evident.
Currently, we live surrounded by passwords, workflows, and screens, in a labyrinth of tools that should make things easier, but often complicate them. Because of this, there's a growing perception that we're not looking for apps themselves, but the results they deliver. And if it's possible to achieve those results without using an app, even better. Artificial intelligence is driving this silent and integrated change, especially through the popularization of natural interfaces like voice search.
In 2025, approximately 20.5% of people worldwide will use this form of research, a slight increase compared to the 20.3% recorded in the first quarter of 2024, according to data from Data Reportal. Furthermore, the number of voice assistants in use will surpass the global population, reaching 8.4 billion devices in 2025, according to Statista. By merging intent and execution into a single act, AI eliminates the need for explicit interactions with platforms.
Online search already shows signs of this transition, where you type a question and the answer appears without clicks or manual filtering. Traditional search, which required multiple steps, is beginning to be replaced by direct answers. This is the new disintermediation, not a visible break, but a gradual disappearance of tools, and this transformation shifts the role of technology from interface to infrastructure.
Soon, tasks like writing, organizing, translating, or planning can be performed the moment the desire arises, without the mediation of visible applications. Technology will become as ubiquitous and silent as electricity or running water—essential, yet invisible. This implies that many software programs and platforms, once central to the digital experience, will cease to have form, brand, or perceptible presence. The
practical consequence is that a significant part of the SaaS ecosystem may become infrastructure and no longer a service to the end user. When functionality becomes internal to an automated cognitive layer, the need to access specific tools disappears. For the user, this absence will not be a loss; on the contrary, it will be perceived as a gain in fluidity. Nostalgia for applications will cease to exist because, in practice, they will dissolve into the flow of tasks.
The impact of this disintermediation on the market is profound. Business models based on user retention on a platform will need to reinvent themselves, as value will reside in the result, not the journey. For companies, this means competing not for the most attractive interface, but for the ability to integrate seamlessly and efficiently into the user's life. For consumers, it opens up the possibility of a daily life less fragmented by screens and logins, but more dependent on infrastructures controlled by a few global suppliers.
The great disintermediation that emerges is neither utopian nor libertarian, as was dreamed in the early years of the internet. It is technical, silent, and definitive. By shortening the distance between thought and action, artificial intelligence erases the center of the digital experience and relegates interfaces to the background. In the near future, we will not notice when an application ceases to exist; we will simply move on, as if it had never been part of our daily lives. And perhaps it is precisely there that we will realize that the future has already arrived.
