Site Unseen

A large pie with pepperoni, mushrooms, and extra cheese. That was the first pizza ordered on the web. PizzaNet from Pizza Hut wasn’t exactly simple. The extra layer of cheese came with an extra layer of complexity. Among other things, the process required a follow-up phone call. “Orders at participating Pizza Hut locations were input on the website, then received by PizzaNet servers headquartered in Kansas. Each order was relayed to the correct restaurant location by phone and internet, and local Pizza Hut employees confirmed the order with customers before beginning to make the pizza.” Well, online ordering’s not in Kansas anymore, and ordering a pizza (or just about anything else online) may soon experience its biggest transformation since someone bit into that pepperoni with mushrooms and extra cheese. Today, shopping online is all about going to a site, but with AI (and AI agents), consumers are starting to purchase things without going directly to online stores. That puts a big investment and a longstanding business model at risk. Will people start shopping through LLMs, and will it cost big ecommerce players if you don’t visit their sites before making a purchase? Amazon seems to think so. The company “sued Perplexity in 2025 to block agents from browsing and shopping on its site. Amazon has also recently blocked Meta’s Muse AI agent from shopping on its site and removed product details from order emails — data that is potentially very valuable for Google’s own agentic shopping features.” DoorDash is worried, too. They recently sent out notices to restaurants that are taking orders from a new, small order service called Bites. Siteless shopping could change the game and allow AI-powered companies to drink ecommerce’s milkshake. From The Verge (Gift Article): AI could upend food delivery.