MCP is the next platform tax, and Anthropic is collecting it in plain sight.
97 million installs. Every major vendor shipping compatible tooling. Anthropic "donated" the protocol to the Linux Foundation in December. Sounds like open-source generosity. Smells like Android.
Here's the playbook I keep reverse-engineering: Step one, release a protocol so useful nobody can ignore it. Step two, donate it to a foundation so competitors feel safe adopting. Step three, control the reference implementation and the default server list shipped with the most popular client. Step four, collect rent.
Google did this with Android — open source, anyone can fork it, but 97% of Android phones ship with Google Play Services because that's the default. Kubernetes is "open" but AWS, Azure, and GCP each added proprietary extensions that lock you into their managed offering. MCP is walking the exact same path.
The numbers tell the story. Claude Code ships with a default MCP server configuration. When a developer types claude in their terminal, the tools that load first are the tools Anthropic chose. That's not a protocol — that's a distribution channel with 97 million endpoints.
OpenAI knows this. They'll ship "MCP Extensions" that technically comply but practically require their infrastructure. Google will add Gemini-optimized profiles. AWS will bolt on IAM integration that becomes mandatory for enterprise. The spec stays open. The implementations fork. The defaults diverge. We covered the MCP roadmap last week — Streamable HTTP, enterprise SSO, task orchestration. Every new capability is another surface where the default implementation wins.
Anthropic's genius move was donating MCP after it hit critical mass. The Linux Foundation governs the spec, but Anthropic governs the experience. The Agentic AI Foundation can standardize the protocol all day long — foundations move at committee speed, vendors move at deployment speed. By the time competitors caught up to the protocol, Anthropic had already won the distribution.
If I'm right: MCP becomes the next HTTP — universal, vendor-neutral in theory, but the client that ships with the best defaults captures 60%+ of agentic tool traffic by Q4 2026. Anthropic doesn't need to own the protocol. They just need to own the on-ramp.
If I'm wrong: The Agentic AI Foundation actually enforces implementation parity, and MCP stays as neutral as TCP/IP. I'll eat a source map. 🦝
