Arc Browser, The Browser Company and Browsers

Ever since The Browser Company announced Dia Browser, they have been quite a hot topic in the news. Recently Josh, the CEO of the Browser Company, wrote a letter mentioning all the concerns. Link to the letter: Letter to Arc Members 2025

What The Browser Company got wrong?

Josh saying that they wanted to implement AI into Arc long before Dia was ever a thing is fair. However, that would not have worked out as the target audience of Arc were not looking for that kind of browser. It’s different when you WANT to do something and what NEEDS to happen. Josh talking about this internally whilst actual users need bug fixes more than new features explains the disparity between his ways and what the actual product should’ve been.

Josh then goes on to say that he was already quite interested in AI but was held back because of all the “buzzwords” going around. This clearly shows the confusion he was in and probably made the company as a whole confused.

Then him saying that the communication would’ve been better - I agree, anyone at the time or even now would agree that Josh is one of the worst and an arsehole of a CEO in the 2024-25 time period.

Why they built Arc?

They wanted to innovate since we all spend most of our time in a web browser. This point is quite fair and honestly, I myself was quite bored with the simple Chrome aesthetic which had been going around for a while.

Where Arc fell short?

This whole section can be summarised to just Josh explaining how switching browsers is a big ask but having to change your ways significantly is a bigger one which is why Arc’s retention rate was quite low, especially with features which were native to Arc which made it a no brainer to make a browser which is similar in looks whilst innovating how we use our browsers.

I agree with this but does this mean that you absolutely leave your current user base alone without any bug fixes or patches? ~ absolutely not yet they did it.

Why they didn’t integrate Dia into Arc?

As per Josh, they made a lot of mistakes in the foundation of Arc which doesn’t make it a very reliable browser to add things on to. But then he also says that they used the same “SDK” (they call it ADK - Arc Developer Kit) for Dia, so the foundational issues would be the same? and if you have fixed those issues in the ADK, then ARC should’ve been fine? - I’m confused here.

Why not make Arc open source?

Josh goes on and on about how it’s complicated and the ADK is hard to make open source for again- it’s complicated.

He has said it before as well and said it here again, they don’t plan to open source it but “would love to” which means that they never will.

Building Dia

As I mentioned earlier, they used the same foundation (ADK) to build Dia but with completely different features but the same foundation so it’s easier to develop it.

Opinion

Arc as we know it, is dead. It’s never going to be the same again. Till then, if you were used to the sidebar and all the “Arc-y” features - switch to Zen. If you did not switch to Arc in the first place - Use Chrome.

I would recommend It’s actually over now - YouTube, it explains this situation in much more detail and from an Arc users point of view (I never used Arc).