So it's Chromium, but instead of Google having all of your data the data goes to The Browser Company and Datadog and somehow also still Google (via GCP Firebase)? And the FAQ link for why you need an Arc account goes to a missing page (https://resources.arc.net/hc/en-us/articles/19401542261911-B...)?
Is the pitch really just that it's not Google and a rearranged sidebar? What am I missing?
Arc is trying a bunch of crazy stuff. Really innovating on the browser experience—which I didn’t even think was possible. Some of their stuff sticks. Some of it doesn’t. I enjoy the wild and bumpy ride.
My fear is that they’ll slowly evolve into just a vanilla Chrome clone as they iterate to improve their usage metrics. :( A lot has already changed since last October.
I've been using Arc on macOS since early on in their beta. I don't think I can go back to other browsers now. For me its a combination of how tabs and pinned tabs are organized along with spaces on the sidebar, along with having a command palette is really really nice. Exited to use this on Windows as well now.
It's a huge whiff that they didn't choose to go with WebKit, contribute back, and provide a unique interface juxtaposed to Safari. I like Arc, in principle, but I hate how wasteful Chromium is with a computer's resources and the idea that it should be an operating system on top of your computer. I want my web browser to just... browse the web and not launch background processes and all these weird things that the web wasn't originally designed for.
Or even Arc with pluggable rendering engines. A power-efficient, battery-sipping version using WebKit would be a dream come true.
Thanks for the heads up on that. I was going to try it out, but given the login requirement, Windows 11 only, and Chromium, I think I'll just be sticking with Firefox.
- I can handle many many tabs in a clean, efficient and organized way
- web pages show by default full screen, without: window bar, tool bar, url box, status bar, ...
- integration with AI tools
- it can handle several identities (work, home, hobby, ...) meaning that you be logged simultaneously on an app (gmail, notion, WhatsApp, ...) with different identities
I guess I'm not the target customer because I don't keep tons of tabs open and I prefer to use separate browsers for my separate accounts. I haven't looked into the AI tools though.
