Starting today, I’m going to post regular analyst “field notes” about how the agentic web is shaking out. These will be more informal, more observational, and more human.
This week I launched a new tech blog devoted entirely to tracking the evolution of the agentic web: it’s called Agentic Web News (AWN) and is published via the Ghost CMS. I hope you all check it out and subscribe — you’ll get a weekly market signals briefing plus exclusive interviews.
But enough self-promotion. The point I actually wanted to make is that “agentic web”, as a new term to describe this current era of the internet, has really gained traction this week. Which was great timing for my blog launch.
In particular, Google used the term a few times during its developer keynote at Google I/O this week, and in its social media promotions after. I’ve also noticed some other large companies using it — e.g. Parallel Web Systems (led by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal) and Adobe.
I think Google getting behind the term is especially notable, though. In its summary of 15 updates from Google I/O, the Chrome for Developers team used this headline: “Powering the agentic web with new capabilities, tools, and features in Chrome” (emphasis mine). In the first paragraph, the team wrote:
“As we enter the era of the agentic web, we see a shift that bridges the gap between complex developer workflows, underlying platform capabilities, and everyday user experiences.”
Obviously, this is very developer-focused. But if you’re as old as I am, you’ll remember that “Web 2.0” as a term first gained traction amongst the developer and entrepreneur community of Silicon Valley. Only after it got a foothold amongst those people, did it slowly fan out into an industry term used more widely.
Also just like in Web 2.0, there are some well-funded new companies that are using “agentic web” as their rallying cry. I mentioned Parallel Web Systems in my debut AWN market signals post this week; and that was just before it launched something called Index: “a platform for content owners to understand how AI agents use their work, and earn revenue when they do.” I’ll dig into Index more on AWN next week, but today I saw this video introduction Agrawal did with The Atlantic’s Nicholas Thompson:
CMSs and major publishing platforms are also starting to adopt the term. Automattic is positioning WordPress as “the Operating System of the Agentic Web,” Webflow says it is “the agentic web marketing platform,” and just this week Drupal founder Dries Buytaert argued that “Drupal is uniquely positioned for what comes next with the agentic web.”
Adobe has gone all-in, using the term in a blog post about the Adobe Experience Manager product, along with a broader positioning statement about Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs). It was also a topic of discussion at a recent Adobe developer conference.
Finally, I’ll note that my own personal web hero, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is on a panel next week at the IAB Tech Lab Summit 2026. The theme of the summit? “Welcome to the Agentic Web.” I’m very keen to hear what Sir Tim says about this trend. Alas, it’s not an online conference and I can’t afford to fly to NYC right now! But hopefully that panel gets posted onto YouTube later (please IAB Tech Lab).
Regardless of what people call it, there are a lot of questions yet to answer about the agentic web — for example, how is Google planning to make money off it? So even though I’m already hearing about a bunch of new startups being built for the agentic web era, just as I did in early Web 2.0, I’m aware that I also need to pay close attention to the impacts on the wider ecosystem. Like us poor (literally) indie publishers, for one!
That’s my Friday field note for today, let me know if you like this format. And don’t forget to subscribe to Agentic Web News 😉
Lead image: Google I/O developer keynote, which discussed the agentic web.