by al_borland | 2025-05-27 01:05:40+00:00
There is a lot of talk on wanting to be transparent, but where was the transparency on stopping development of new features and going into support only mode? I saw Arc pick up popularity a lot after they stopped feature development, and pointed out the lack of new features to many people who were pushing others to use Arc, while they had no idea that it was effectively a dead browser. All I had to point to was a single tweet, which was a reply to someone, not even out to all the followers. It's like they didn't want to lie, but also didn't want people to know. The article mentioning that most users didn't notice points to this as well. They didn't notice, because it didn't seem like it was ever really announced in a way that made it to the masses.

The article talks about a goal of making well cared for software. Leaving Arc to just get security updates and bug fixes, in a space as dynamic as the web doesn't seem well cared for. The article itself talks about how old browsers are going to die.

I stopped using Arc when I heard they weren't going to keep adding features. I didn't want to further invest in dead software. While I wouldn't expect development in year 5 to be as fast as year 1, once current feature completeness and stability is reached, I think the message they put out in that tweet of there being nothing left to do hit me with a sour note. The web will evolve, there will be more to do. Browsers have been evolving for 30+ years, and Dia is proof that the browser isn't done evolving.

I'm finding this experience with Arc to make it hard to get excited about Dia. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I expect AI will cause browsers to evolve, but I also expect the likes of Safari and Chrome to continue to evolve, rather than throwing out their app and starting over, even if it involves a radical rewrite at some point. As the article points out, the web and web pages will still be important, the core feature of the browser still needs to exist.

While I agree that it seemed like Arc was developed in an almost haphazard way, adding whatever feature came to their mind... maybe it did get to bloated and hard to manage, but it's really that lack of transparency, coupled with the article talking about how much they value transparency, that is really leaving me so negative here. In several areas, the words don't seem to match the actions, which is eroding trust with me.

Ultimately, experimental browsers are good to have in the market, as they act as a test bed for new ideas, which ultimately get picked up by the bigger players. Opera was good at this 20 years ago. Maybe The Browser Company can fill that niche, but it doesn't seem like they want to be a niche browser, even though they are reliant on Chrome for their engine.

Sorry this comes off so negative, but just like they say they should have killed Arc a year sooner, this article should have come out a year sooner. I'd like to think maybe I just missed it, but judging by how many people I pointed it out to, who were shocked, and how when I went looking for proof to show them, all I came back with was a single tweet reply, I don't think I did, but would be happy to hear I missed something.