The recent history of technology is marked by the promise of disintermediation. At the beginning of the internet, there was a belief that the network would allow for direct connections, where artists would speak to their fans without record labels, companies would sell to consumers without retailers, and ideas would circulate without filters. It was a libertarian, almost romantic, ideal of a simpler and more transparent world. For a while, this vision seemed to take shape, but reality reorganized itself around new intermediaries, just as powerful as the old ones, albeit disguised in the form of digital platforms.
Services like Uber, Mercado Livre, Instagram, and Amazon have created closed ecosystems that have facilitated interactions and transactions, but have also established new layers between desire and its fulfillment. They were practical, efficient, and often, unavoidable. The rise of software as a service (SaaS) has consolidated a model where technology presents itself as packaging, where an elegant interface wraps around the user's intention and translates it into action, but in the process, it 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 leap from the 15% recorded in 2024, according to Gartner. No matter how fluid an interface may seem, 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, flows, and screens, in a labyrinth of tools that should facilitate but often complicate. With this, there is a growing perception that we are not seeking applications themselves, but the results they deliver. And if it is possible to reach these results without going through an app, even better. Artificial intelligence is promoting this silent and integrated change, especially through the popularization of natural interfaces like voice search.
By 2025, approximately 20.51 billion people worldwide will use this form of search, a slight increase from the 20.31 billion recorded in the first quarter of 2024, according to Data Reportal. Furthermore, the number of voice assistants in use exceeds the global population, reaching 8.4 billion devices by 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 offers signs of this transition, where you type in 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 the tools, and this transformation shifts the role of technology from interface to infrastructure.
Soon, tasks such as writing, organizing, translating, or planning will be able to be executed the moment the desire arises, without the mediation of visible applications. Technology will become as ubiquitous and silent as electricity or piped water, essential but invisible. This implies that many software and platforms, previously central to the digital experience, will cease to have a form, brand, or noticeable presence.
The practical consequence is that a significant part of the SaaS ecosystem may become infrastructure rather than an end-user service. 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. The 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 retaining the user on a platform will need to reinvent themselves, as the value will now reside in the outcome, not the path. For companies, this means competing no longer for the most attractive interface, but for the ability to integrate invisibly and efficiently into the user's life. For consumers, it opens up the possibility of a daily routine that is less fragmented by screens and logins, but more dependent on infrastructures controlled by a few global providers.
The great disintermediation that emerges is neither utopian nor libertarian, as was dreamed of 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 app ceases to exist, we will simply move on, as if it had never been part of our daily lives. And perhaps that is precisely when we will realize that the future has already arrived.
