...it is useful to collectively regard shopping agents as a degenerate case of the Semantic Web. Shopping agents work in the complete absence of any explicit account of the semantics of Web content because the meaning of the Web content that the agents are expected to encounter can be determined by the human programmers who hardwire it into the Web application software. [...] Shopping agents can work even if there is no automatic processing of semantics; it can be done without any formal representation of semantics; it can even be done without any explicit representation of semantics at all. The key to enabling shopping agents to automatically use Web content is that the meaning of the Web content that the agents are expected to encounter can be determined by the human programmers who hardwire it into the Web application software. [...] We argued that today’s Web shopping agents satisfy the above definition for the Semantic Web. We also acknowledged that most people would say that these examples do not satisfy their vision of the Semantic Web. We resolved this conflict by regarding these applications collectively as a degenerate case of the Semantic Web, and we explored what it is about these applications that enables them to make use of today’s Web content.