Goodbye arc.
A browser company hosting
the newsletter on a substack
should have been the red flag.
I needed to know that Arc wasn't long for
the good side of the internet, but this
week's "Letter to Arc members 2025" post
is the final nail in the coffin for my
favorite browser of the last few years.
The CEO's focus on AI is
the only thing that matters.
"Second, I would've embraced AI
fully, sooner, and unapologetically.
The truth is, I was obsessed.
I'd stay up late after my family went
to bed, playing with chat GPT, not
for work, but out of sheer curiosity."
End quote.
That's the real red flag that
says to me The Browser Company
doesn't really care about the web.
This post I'm writing right now doesn't
exist in his vision of an AI browser.
It'll just get slurped up into the
machine and barfed out as part of an
aggregation of "commentary in 2025 on Arc
being tossed aside in favor of AI barf"
question someone asks in a few years.
If I'm lucky, it'll be referenced
somewhere in the fine print,
but we've already seen how much
these tech dudes fighting to be
the next Steve Jobs actually care
about creative work on the web.
"I just don't know how you go
around asking everyone first.
I just don't see how that would work.
Clegg said.
And by the way, if you did it in
Britain and no one else did it,
you would basically kill the AI
industry in this country overnight.
Nick Clegg, being intrigued on the Verge."
End quote.
Why not build a good
browser and charge for it?
Well, that's not good enough
for The Browser Company.
Remember, if you're not changing the
world with your software, it's not enough.
"So when people ask how venture
capital influenced us or why we
didn't just charge for ARC and run
a profitable business, I get it.
They're fair questions.
But to me they miss the
forest for the trees.
I If the goal was to build a small,
profitable company with a great team
and loyal customers, we wouldn't
have chosen to try and build the
successor to the web browser.
The most ubiquitous piece
of software there is.
The point of this was
always bigger for us.
To build good, cared for software
that could have an impact
for people at real scale."
End quote.
Dia is the name of their new AI
browser, and the comparison to selling
candles is probably a perfect analogy.
"Dia is not really a reaction
to Arc in its shortcomings.
No.
Imagine writing an essay justifying
why you're moving on from your candle
business at the dawn of electric light."
End quote.
Candles are pretty important when
the electricity gets shut off.
I use AI related tooling for various
tasks, as do my kids, but the more I
do, the more I feel like an important
part of our humanity on the web is being
lost, both on the creative side when blog
posts and videos someone worked hard to
create, get slurped up into the AI slop
machine, but also in our own ability
to research, learn and understand how
to grow a better lawn, make a breakfast
plan, or repair a broken dishwasher.
"In many ways, chat interfaces
are already acting like browsers.
They search, regenerate, respond.
They interact with APIs, LLMs,
databases, and people are
spending hours a day in them.
If you're skeptical, call a
cousin in high school or college.
Natural language interfaces, which
abstract way the tedium of old
computing paradigms are here to stay."
I don't wanna be a Steve Balmer
laughing at the launch of the iPhone,
but I also think a lot more skepticism
and thought needs to go into the
AI development world than most of
the current crop of developers and
venture capitalist enthusiasts who
seem hell bent on repeating the same
cycle we had with crypto, VR, and
so many other pieces of technology
that were going to change the world.
And when a lot of the people at the
head of these AI companies have the
emotional intelligence of an Elon Musk,
I just don't have a lot of hope for
it, even if it is actually amazing and
could be guided into a healthy version
for all of humanity to benefit from.
So what browser will I use now?
In the short term I'll be using a
mix of Safari and Chrome, mainly for
Riverside type video audio apps that
require a Chromium based browser.
The smart folks in the Shop Talk
Show Discord are recommending Zen
as a possible option, though it's
still quite early in development.