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The Internet

The Company Behind Arc Is Now Building a Second, Much Simpler Browser (theverge.com) 30

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
The Browser Company is developing a new, much simpler browser distinct from Arc, which has proven too complex for mainstream adoption despite a strong following among power users. The Verge's David Pierce reports: Arc is not dying, [says CEO Josh Miller]. He says that over and over, in fact, even after I tell him the YouTube video the company just released sounds like the thing companies say right before they kill a product. It's just that Arc won't change much anymore. It'll get stability updates and bug fixes, and there's a team at The Browser Company dedicated to those. "In that sense," Miller says, "it feels like a complete-ish product." Most of the team's energy and time will now be dedicated to starting from scratch. "Arc was basically this front-end, tab management innovation," Miller says. "People loved it. It grew like a weed. Then it started getting slow and started crashing a lot, and we felt bad, and we had to learn how to make it fast. And we kind of lost sight, in some ways, of the fact that we've got to do the operating system part."

The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely -- one that is much more proactive, more powerful, more AI-centric, more in line with that original vision. Call it the iPhone of web browsers, or the "internet computer," or whatever other metaphor you like. The idea is to turn the browser into an app platform. Miller still wants to do it, and he wants to do it for everyone. What does that look like? Miller is a bit vague on the details. The new browser, which Miller intimates could launch as soon as the beginning of next year, is designed to come with no switching costs, which means among other things that it will have horizontal tabs and fewer ideas about organization. The idea is to "make the first 90 seconds effortless" in order to get more people to switch. And then, slowly, to reveal what this new browser can do.
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The Company Behind Arc Is Now Building a Second, Much Simpler Browser More

The Company Behind Arc Is Now Building a Second, Much Simpler Browser

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  • Now that was a minimalist browser, and if you wanted more you had powerful XUL extensions. Modern Firefox is up to three sponsored tiles in the home screen now.

    • >"Modern Firefox is up to three sponsored tiles in the home screen now."

      I guess, if you leave it in the default configuration. Does anyone actually do that?

      user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "about:blank");

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Simpler for the mere mortals to change it in the graphical settings page I guess, which works fine too.

        • >"Simpler for the mere mortals to change it in the graphical settings page I guess, which works fine too."

          While that is true, this is a geek site, so the pref in about:config is more appropriate :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Bring us Phoenix v2.0! :P

    • You can just set it to "blank" or to any URL you like.

  • a different kind of browser entirely -- one that is much ...

    => more proactive - Huh?
    => more powerful - Okay.
    => more AI-centric - Hell no.
    => Call it the iPhone of web browsers - Nope.
    => or the "internet computer," - Nope.
    => The idea is to turn the browser into an app platform. - Seriously, no.

  • Uh-oh CEO speak ahead (Score:5, Funny)

    by ihavesaxwithcollies ( 10441708 ) on Friday October 25, 2024 @06:22PM (#64894853)

    Arc CEO Josh Miller, The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely

    Ok, sounds good

    more proactive, more powerful

    Yes!!...

    more AI-centric

    Ye...wait, what?

    Call it the iPhone of web browsers

    Oh...good lord.

    the idea is to turn the browser into an app

    hahahaha, pack it up, it's time to go home.

  • From the Arc FAQ [arc.net] page:

    Q: What makes Arc different from other browsers?
    A: In other words, Arc is to your ex-browser what the iPhone was to cellphones. Or as one of our members said “like moving from a PC to a Mac.” It’s from the future — and just feels great.

    Hey, I *like* my Pixel 5a and PCs -- especially the one running Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon -- and the Windows 10 system is fine for what I use it for and they're certainly a LOT less expensive than a Mac, or iPhone.

  • I could not stand using Arc for more than 2 minutes. It is complete garbage, and the CEO is finally confessing as much.

    In the end, he describes effectively a Chromebook, and it's not as if those are selling at any rate that could be called enviable or desirable.

    There are A LOT of good ideas out there, and, increasingly, it's innovative media like 404 Media that find them, not the "traditional" media like the Verge, which is owned by Vox, a veritable behemoth.

    • ChromeOS is amazing for what it does: it's the lowest effort modern OS, the one you wish all your relatives used. I use a Chromebox for work and the unpack to privileged access time was under five minutes, and downtime for maintenance is next to zero.

      So, yeah ... I think it's been done.

  • ... this guy says he has no clue how to even describe his new product yet but is thrilled about 3 ideas:

    1. using the internet should feel like riding a waymo
    2. cmd-T for chatbot (i guess that's ctrl-L in windows?)
    3. browsing feels automatic and anticipates your needs

    thx for the info? so since 1 and 3 are vapor i'll go with 2, which is a functionality you could easily get on any browser either out of the box, via settings or worst case via something like auto-hotkey. if you even wanted that. yay, billion dol

  • You don't need a computer. You don't need a tablet. You don't even need a smartphone! Our CALLY-OO browser works even with a feature phone or an old-fashioned landline. No typing! No clicking!

    It's so simple! There are no ads! How does it work, you wonder? Okay, but be warned, once I tell you - you're gonna smack your head wondering why you couldn't come up with this million-dollar idea yourself!

    1) Dial 1-900-CALLY-OO
    2) Speaking slowly and clearly, state the name of the website you want to visit
    3) Instantly

    • ”..more powerful, more AI-centric..”

      Your parody may not be as far off, based on whatever the hell that means.

      • Well, we know of at least one large company that's already used "AI" as a euphemism for "700 low-paid workers in a third-world country".
         

  • >"The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely"

    Arc is nothing but yet another UI on top of Google-controlled Chromium.

    If the plan is to actually design a third open source browser (Firefox, Chrom*, and something new) I think that is a fantastic idea. We need MORE actual choices, not a single good browser that is not under Google's control (Firefox) and many dozens of Chom*.

    • >"check out Ladybird."

      "An alpha release is planned in 2026"

      So maybe check it out in a few YEARS...

      • >"check out Ladybird."

        "An alpha release is planned in 2026"

        So maybe check it out in a few YEARS...

        If the challenge was a development cycle that makes Google apps more stable than a hovercraft ride at a weight watchers convention, fucking nailed it.

  • ..and there's a team at The Browser Company dedicated to..

    Why do I get a weird feeling that a certain product could be fantastically fucking amazing right now, but a certain marketing department wouldn’t be able to uniquely market it worth a shit due to an utter lack of creativity..

  • with tabbed

  • "Here's a list of devices and operating systems we aren't currently supporting: Linux "...
    Fuck off with that incompatible garbage pile.

    • The target audience for Arc and similar browsers has zero intersection with the set of people who would run Linux, so everything is fine. As the people from a famous multi-billion dollar company would say: "computers/phones/watches/whatever for the rest of us". The company behind Arc tries to imitate this paradigm, but it won't work. They are late in the game, plus they lack the capacity to make it work.

  • Call it the iPhone of web browsers, or the "internet computer," or whatever other metaphor you like.

    Back in my day, we tried to market these as "Information Appliances", and they were a huge flop.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by colfer ( 619105 )

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      Minitel was the exception, with millions of terminals. We knew about it in the U.S., and we used the word "minitel," with a French accent, as a one-word comment on the fractured online world we had in the early 1990s: IRC, Gopher, Mosaic, Sabre (the public, online version of a travel agent's terminal), and most amazingly, Nexis, if you had a home dialup connection to a university library that offered it. Nexis was (or is?) a commercial service with the full text and recent a

      • >"There it's claimed that "in 1980, Ouest-France expressed the concern that Minitel would 'separate people from each other and endanger social relationships.'"

        So much better AND worse than they could have ever imagined.

  • Aside from "...(a browser) that is much more proactive, more powerful, more AI-centric..." being the direct antithesis of "...a new, much simpler browser...", I want none of those things.

    I want a browser that goes where I point it, renders served html code reasonably well but also does LITERALLY NOTHING unless I specifically tell it to, and reports to nobody.

    Feels like that's a simple ask.

    This mountebank is simply looking for another vehicle to shill.

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