New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- The online world is set for another big shift in consumer behaviour. People who once relied on search engines, online aggregators and price-comparison sites to find shopping, travel, insurance and other deals are dabbling with AI agents to do all this for them.

Against this backdrop, Amazon's blocking of Meta's Muse agent is not just a dispute over bots shopping online, but a bugle blown in a battle likely to unfold over control of the internet's agentic layer.

Amazon says Muse barged onto its site without permission, raising security and privacy flags, while Meta disputes some aspects of that charge. The latter wants Muse widely adopted as a shopper, but Amazon has its own agent being developed for that job.

As ...