Revisiting My 2025 Web Development Predictions — What Actually Happened
As the founder of ABZ Global, with 14+ years in web development and design, I kicked off 2025 with a YouTube video outlining five key predictions for the year. Now that it’s October, it’s a good time to look back and see how those forecasts held up. Drawing from developer surveys, market data, and industry reports, here’s how each prediction performed in the real world. Some aligned closely with reality; others evolved in unexpected ways. Let’s dive in.
1) Angular will compete to be the first choice for new applications
I expected Angular to mature significantly, improving developer experience and positioning itself as a top contender for new apps. That largely happened: Angular 17 introduced Signals-based reactivity (with follow-on improvements in the 18/19 cycle), significantly modernizing state handling and SSR performance.
However, React remains the most widely used front-end library. BuiltWith counts ~53.8 million live websites using React (and ~87 million historical), underscoring its deep installed base and hiring gravity. Angular continues to shine in enterprise environments, while Vue’s lighter footprint keeps it attractive for smaller teams—so the field remains fragmented.
Verdict: Partially accurate. Angular has clearly leveled up and competes well—especially in enterprise and SSR-heavy builds—but React is still the default for most new projects.
2) Easier ways to use AI on the web
I predicted that AI integrations would get much simpler. That one landed squarely. Developer tooling and no-code platforms made it dramatically easier to add AI features:
GitHub Copilot / Cursor.ai for day-to-day coding assistance and scaffolding.
Divi AI (WordPress) now generates layouts, images, and copy inside the builder.
Bubble ships first-party AI features and one-click LLM integrations. PR Newswire+4Elegant Themes+4Elegant Themes+4
Meanwhile, AI “agents” moved from hype to early practicality, handling multi-step workflows (content, data fetch, summarization). For our client work at ABZ Global, we’ve leaned on Gemini and ChatGPT APIs to add smarter search, recommendations, and support into e-commerce and custom apps.
Verdict: Accurate. AI isn’t just an add-on anymore—it’s an expected layer in modern web experiences.
3) More traditional apps will integrate useful AI features
I expected a broad surge of AI features in “ordinary” apps—and we got it. The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey shows 84% of respondents are using or planning to use AI tools, up from 76% last year, with over half of professional developers using AI tools daily. That’s a clear signal of mainstream adoption. Stack Overflow+1
Even non-AI-native stacks embraced this: WordPress builders (e.g., Divi AI) brought generation and optimization to non-technical creators; many SaaS products added predictive analytics, personalization, and automated support. Elegant Themes
Verdict: Spot on. AI capabilities are now commonplace across traditional apps.
4) Searching on Google will decrease in favor of AI services
I anticipated a shift from traditional Google searches toward AI-driven discovery (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.). What we saw: Google is still dominant—worldwide share hovered around ~90% in September 2025—but AI search usage grew rapidly. StatCounter Global Stats+1
Two notable data points this year:
ChatGPT usage surged to ~2.5B prompts per day by July 2025 (up from ~1B eight months prior), reflecting a clear change in behavior—even if many prompts aren’t one-and-done “searches.” TechRadar
OpenAI launched SearchGPT (prototype) with realtime web results and source links, while Perplexity’s traffic continued its sharp rise. Reuters+2Similarweb+2
For us, that means optimizing content for both classic SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) so AI systems can confidently cite and summarize our pages.
Verdict: Partially correct. Google still commands search, but AI assistants are becoming a parallel discovery channel that teams can’t ignore.
5) Improvements in AI intelligence
Finally, I expected major leaps in AI “smarts,” driven by hardware and model advances. NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture (powering the GeForce RTX 50 Series) landed in 2025 and is explicitly framed as an AI-horsepower jump for creators and real-time inference; NVIDIA’s architectural brief details DLSS 4 and neural rendering advances. NVIDIA+2NVIDIA+2
On the economics side, multiple analysts continue to project multi-trillion-dollar impact from AI over the next decade (ranges vary by methodology), and 2025 tech-trends reports highlight agentic workflows and hardware scale-up as key enablers. McKinsey & Company+1
Verdict: Accurate. 2025 saw meaningful steps forward in both model capability and the hardware that makes real-time, on-device, and edge AI more practical.
Closing thoughts
2025 has been a transformative year for web development—with AI firmly at the center. Not every prediction was exact, but the direction of travel was right: AI-enhanced, efficient, user-centric web experiences, with evolving discovery channels that include AI assistants alongside Google.
At ABZ Global, we’re continuing to build on these trends—from Squarespace & Shopify to Angular and AI-powered custom web apps.
If you’re planning a project, reach out via our contact form or email marian@abzglobal.net