Anthropic, Google Donate 2 AI Protocols as Battle Shifts Beyond 100 Million MCP Downloads
Updated
Updated · InfoWorld · Jul 20
Anthropic, Google Donate 2 AI Protocols as Battle Shifts Beyond 100 Million MCP Downloads
2 articles · Updated · InfoWorld · Jul 20
Summary
Anthropic placed MCP under the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation after the protocol reached nearly 100 million monthly SDK downloads across more than 10,000 servers.
Google had already donated its A2A protocol to the same foundation, while OpenAI supports remote MCP servers, sits on the steering committee and contributed AGENTS.md.
The giveaway reflects a strategic shift: frontier model leadership changes too quickly to be a durable moat, pushing AI firms to compete on where tools, workflows and enterprise integrations accumulate.
Open protocols still solve a real problem by reducing custom connector work and letting enterprises swap compatible models more easily, but they do not erase the pull of incumbent platforms.
The broader implication is that AI standards are being commoditized much like Kubernetes or Git, with value expected to concentrate in the platforms where AI-assisted work ultimately lives.