if you are from At a certain age, you will remember what the Web used to be: sites created and developed by humans.

You can load a directory like AltaVista or Yahoo and click on categories including Home & Family, Science, and Computers. In those listings you will find pages created by fans, academics, and technology nerds.

People gathered on forums and bulletin boards, and web developers tended to avoid putting images on their sites because it would slow down page loading. The idea of ​​watching a video over the Internet seemed almost impossible.

In the decades since those formative years, the web has been transformed almost unrecognizable. Almost everything is now monetized to the nth degree, from search results and forums to social networks and media outlets. Powerful apps and tools now run inside browsers, while AI is working hard to completely eliminate the need for an open web.

There are now a good number of companies that are interested in seeing the spirit of the old web return, and that includes Kagi. Kagi has been running a search engine based on privacy and security for several years. Now Kagi has expanded its efforts beyond its alternative Google search tool to curate a “small network” of human-written and run sites.

The Kagi Search Engine

Since Kagi’s core business is its search engine, it makes sense to start here. Searching with Kagi will cost you a small fee (starting at $5 a month, plus sales tax) for 300 searches. The standard level AI assistant is included in that price; It will help you make sense of what you are seeing. You get unlimited searches and more AI assistant tokens for $10/month. If you want to see what Kagi is like before you commit, there is a free trial available that allows you to perform 100 searches.

The argument Kagi makes for why you should pay for search is quite persuasive. As Kagi explains, searching the web is always going to cost you; It’s just a matter of whether you pay directly with dollars, handing over data about your online activity or examining an increasing number of ads and sponsored links.

In addition to making search more private, Kagi also wants to improve it by offering results that aren’t influenced by paid promotions or whatever Google’s favorite business practices are from month to month. Kagi has its own indexes for web and news, and is designed to promote “high-quality, relevant results” and non-commercial sites.

To get started with Kagi, all you need is an email address and password to manage your account. Then you can start your 100 free searches. Open the search options panel to limit results to images, videos, podcasts, maps, or news, or to filter by time or language.

For me it’s a bit like going back in time. Searching for a band, for example, brings up their official website, Wikipedia page, social media accounts, and YouTube channel, all free of promoted results, related searches, and sponsored content (like concert tickets). It’s more of the way search results used to appear.

Kagi’s little web project

Kagi is now more than a search. The company offers access to a multitude of AI models (of course) and is busy developing its Small Web project, which aims to highlight the best of the internet created and curated by humans. The company also recently launched apps for Android and iOS.

The idea is to avoid a website “dominated by algorithms, ads and noise generated by AI”, in the words of Kagi. It’s a bit like the old StumbleUpon, if you remember that. there is a Next post Button to jump to something else at random, allowing you to favorite what you see or search for something specific. there is a Share button too, of course.