Comment by rpastuszak 10 months ago
Honestly I’ve always considered Arc to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, especially when it comes to privacy.
50-60mm cash at 500mm (!) valuation and no business model is a big red flag when it comes to something as important, as personal as a browser. This is not a charity. Someone, somehow will have to pay for that.
It does get a lot right and feels smooth in ways that Chrome, the various Chrome-clones, and Firefox just don't. It's also ironically the only browser even trying to feel native on Windows, using WinUI/WinAppSDK for its UI there, despite originally being Mac only.
It's unfortunate that other cross platform browsers have such a strong tendency to phone in these little things, because they really do add up to make for a nicer experience.
I'm torn for the same reason: The UX hits all the right notes for me and I've tried every MacOS browser under the sun. I'm an ADHD sufferer and there's something about their combination of features and UI that just lets me get stuff done. And I don't even touch their AI features.
This is all really sad news.
Yeah I’m so torn. It’s honestly the best browser UX I’ve seen, the right combination of vertical tabs, auto archiving, spaces/collections, sync, etc. I don’t care for Easels, but the core is good.
Except… the growth hacks have started to creep in. They overlay an advert for their own AI services on top of regular Google search results pages in their mobile app. Not even a browser chrome UI element, it’s literally over the page content. That feels like a huge violation of what it means to be a browser.
I don’t want their AI features. I don’t want growth hacks. I don’t want to sign in except for sync. I’d happily pay $40 a year for Arc as a product-focused-product, but as a VC-focused-product it’s heading downhill.