Arc's Betrayal: Why I'm Abandoning the Perfect Browser
When I tried Arc by The Browser Company, it was a revelation. I loved the sidebar with the tabs, pinned tabs, Profiles, Spaces, and Air Traffic Control — a way to route links to specific Spaces.
The fact that I can automatically sequester types of websites to a Space (like all social apps in a Space called "Distractions") is incredible.
The Profiles is easily the best implementation of logging in with different accounts and having different contexts I've ever used.
And since it's based on the Chrome browser, all the extensions I know and love already work. It's the most perfect browser.
Which is why I'm so, so sad to say that I’m abandoning Arc, just as The Browser Company has.
Arc is Abandonware
In my defense, The Browser Company abandoned it first. They wouldn't put it that way. They insist that they'll keep doing Chromium updates (the same updates that Google Chrome gets) in order to keep the browser current.
But the truth is since May, I’ve seen a dramatic degradation in performance.
Memory leaks are more frequent and worse. Tabs freeze more. There are little issues with websites, like Riverside, that I used to be able to use flawlessly.
They built a bunch of clever things over the course of a year and then decided they were bored and moved onto AI.
And there are missing features. Well, one crucial feature — one that in my opinion, makes The Browser Company untrustworthy.
Leaving Arc is Difficult
As I was switching to Brave, I made a terrible discovery: you cannot export Pinned tabs and Favorites (which is the primary way Arc handles bookmarks).
In fact, it’s difficult enough to export nearly anything in Arc that some users have built their own scripts to do it.
This is what makes The Browser Company untrustworthy.
They spend a year plus building buzz around a cool, new browser. They got lots of people on it.
And then they abandoned it, giving us no way to get out of it.
If you think this isn’t a charitable recounting, you can read The Browser Company’s reasoning here and get their side of the story.
But the truth is much more obvious than that: having a browser as your only product isn’t a good business model.
The Browser Company is an AI Company
The Browser Company abandoned Arc for Dia, a new AI-powered browser.
And guess what? You can also get Dia Pro for $20/mo. They’ve become an AI company.
Ultimately, I feel like this is a huge setback for innovation in the browser space.
I told people Arc is amazing. “It’s what Chrome would be if it were developed today.”
But the truth is I’m going to have a hard time trusting any new browser from a new company now.
And it’s not that they shouldn’t make money; they should. But they should also do right by their users.
Switching to Brave
For the time being, I’m switching to Brave. They’ve been around for nearly 10 years, the browser is based on Chromium (same as Chrome and Arc), and unlike Arc, it’s open source.
I really like their privacy features…especially since Chrome made ad blockers persona non grata. And they have an actual business model around enhanced features (Search, Communications, and yes, even AI), as well as Privacy (VPN, and first-part Ads).
It’s not as good as Arc, I’ll admit. But at least they are trustworthy.
Were you using Arc? Have you switched? Let me know!