Michael Riedl (Team Internet Group): Two steps ahead

Michael Riedl, CEO of Team Internet Group, explains how A.I. agents will reshape the internet, what he builds for that world and how he leads when things move fast.

You talk about an “agentic internet”. What does it look like two steps ahead?

People ask an A.I. instead of searching, and they get a shortlist of three instead of ten pages of links. For a brand that is a hard cut: if you are not on the shortlist, you do not exist. That is step one. Step two is that the A.I. stops recommending and starts acting. It books, buys and signs for you. At that point every shop and bank needs four answers before it says yes. Who does this agent act for? What is it allowed to do? Has it been tested? What is its track record? Today nobody can answer these across company borders. The hard cases won’t be agents that break. They will be agents that work exactly as built and still do something you never approved. I think all four answers have to be anchored to a name that somebody owns and answers for, which is what a domain name is. It is the one address on the internet that is registered to somebody, works in every country and can be taken away when it is abused.

If you are not on the shortlist, you do not exist.

What are you building for that world?

Team Internet owns Vergleich.org, an independent consumer guide covering around 350,000 product categories. The ratings are never for sale, and we earn only when somebody actually buys, so we carry the risk for the retailer. The aim is to be there wherever a buying decision is made: in search, on social media, in a conversation with an A.I., and for the agent that buys on your behalf. Outside Team Internet, I co-founded and chair ShortDot, which my co-founder Lars Jensen leads from Luxembourg. It is the European leader in new top-level domains and owns five, among them .icu and .bond. It shows that a company from Luxembourg can own part of the internet’s address system, with customers all over the world. After this year’s round the target is to operate more than 20. One of the endings we expect to add is .age. What people do with it is their choice, but I expect many who build for the age of agents will want that address.

How do you lead when things move this fast?

Three rules. Unequivocal accountability: every decision has one owner, by name, and that includes me. Evidence-based decisions: at Vergleich.org we saw in the data how a Google change hit American peers months before it reached us. That was the reason to act, not a gut feeling. Deliberate urgency: we pick the few things that matter now and move quickly on those. We rebuilt the business around paid traffic while the old model was still earning money. That is why A.I. answers in search have not hurt us. Two steps ahead, for me, means moving while you still have the choice.