Kagi's "Small Web" offers a handpicked collection of more than 30,000 non-commercial, human-authored websites, including personal blogs, webcomics, and independent videos.
The term is a bit broader than those protocols and Kagi is far from the first to use it; it certainly isn’t a “hijack” as if it was the name if another project or something. ‘Small Web’ isn’t them claiming to own the concept of the small web, or that it’s somehow only accessible through them… It’s just a feature; search, as a curated product they offer and maintain.
It’s just what they named the lens, because it’s a lens for the ‘small web’ as they defined it; like the other lenses. They aren’t hijacking the word ‘academia’ by having an academia lens…
Sure, maybe they could slap ‘Kagi’ in front of ‘Small Web’ just to be sure, but I doubt anyone will confuse the concept of noncommercial small websites with a paid service…
Also
In general hijacking of names is one of the dangers very specific to our modern era and not really a problem before the Internet.
Neat fact: you can trace the roots of trademark law back like 7000 years …
Because I thought you were obviously wrong about the 7000 years thing, here’s a history of trademarks by some guy named Olivier Pierre:
Since ancient times, merchants have been using signs or marks in trade to distinguish their products. Registrations came much later, in the 18th century with the establishment of Intellectual Property Offices.
[…]
The use of trademarks dates back thousands of years, however we can’t date their origins with precision. Some of the earliest forms of identification of marks date from Prehistory. For instance, the Lascaux cave paintings in France show bulls drawings with marks on them. Experts believe that people were using personal marks to claim ownership of livestock, long before literate societies. That was about 15.000 years ago.
The Egyptian masonry from some 6,000 years ago shows distinguishable quarry marks and stonecutters signs, to identify the source of the stone and the laborer who carried out the work to claim their wages. There were creative entrepreneurs who marketed their goods beyond their localities and sometimes over long distances. Wine amphorae marked with seals were found inside the Tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun who reigned between 1336 a.c. to 1327 a.c. over ancient Egypt.
I’ve gotten so used to think of trademarks as registered trademarks, but it makes sense that it has existed much longer in the literal sense. The earliest known law however dates back little more than 4000 years, and there’s nothing about trademarks there, so I think it’s fair to say trademark law is a lot more modern. :)
I’ve seen “small web” used to describe personal sites and blogs in HTTP-land for a while, like how Kagi is using the term. I think it just so happens, due to the nature of protocols like Gopher and Gemini, all of the content there is very personal, so it gets described as small web.
Yes, besides Gopher and Gemini, “small web” usually includes traditionally coded HTML+simple CSS+handmade/small JS websites. I.e. websites that are not using a big JS framework or huge amounts of CSS.
“Small web” is how usually Gopher, Gemini and such protocols and resources accessible via them are described.
I knew I was right to suspect Kagi, trying to hijack an established name from an important phenomenon is one of the most certain red flags.
In general hijacking of names is one of the dangers very specific to our modern era and not really a problem before the Internet.
And yes, they are doing just that.
They talk about the name in the initial announcement back in 2023 where they link to many blogs discussing the topic.
https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
The term is a bit broader than those protocols and Kagi is far from the first to use it; it certainly isn’t a “hijack” as if it was the name if another project or something. ‘Small Web’ isn’t them claiming to own the concept of the small web, or that it’s somehow only accessible through them… It’s just a feature; search, as a curated product they offer and maintain.
It’s just what they named the lens, because it’s a lens for the ‘small web’ as they defined it; like the other lenses. They aren’t hijacking the word ‘academia’ by having an academia lens…
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html#default-lenses
Sure, maybe they could slap ‘Kagi’ in front of ‘Small Web’ just to be sure, but I doubt anyone will confuse the concept of noncommercial small websites with a paid service…
Also
Neat fact: you can trace the roots of trademark law back like 7000 years …
Because I thought you were obviously wrong about the 7000 years thing, here’s a history of trademarks by some guy named Olivier Pierre:
I’ve gotten so used to think of trademarks as registered trademarks, but it makes sense that it has existed much longer in the literal sense. The earliest known law however dates back little more than 4000 years, and there’s nothing about trademarks there, so I think it’s fair to say trademark law is a lot more modern. :)
Sorry for being entirely off-topic.
I’ve seen “small web” used to describe personal sites and blogs in HTTP-land for a while, like how Kagi is using the term. I think it just so happens, due to the nature of protocols like Gopher and Gemini, all of the content there is very personal, so it gets described as small web.
Yes, besides Gopher and Gemini, “small web” usually includes traditionally coded HTML+simple CSS+handmade/small JS websites. I.e. websites that are not using a big JS framework or huge amounts of CSS.
Also, monetizing the ability to find searches that are not AI slop is, for lack of better phrasing, fucking bullshit.
Literally any free search engine could stop serving searches that are slop - Kagi isn’t stopping them.
It’s almost like “free” search engines have ulterior motives for how they prioritize search results.
Right because providing a service has no costs, lol
Worth noting that when it was initially launched, it didn’t have such an emphasis on AI.
https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
It just so happens that noncommercial small sites tend to be slop-free, and there’s a big demand for that, so now that’s how they’re marketing it.