Looks like VC money ran out so the development company is now making an AI product like everyone else. Kind of feels bad because it was the only good Chromium Browser and kind of innovative in it's own right. I switched over fully to Zen like a month ago so I don't really care but it's just a classic case of tech bro tomfoolery where a company only works for hype so they can eventually sell it to someone eventually. Nobody bought this company because people make browser mods on github for free.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcBrowser/comments/1gc2fxx/arc_officially_not_getting_new_features_only/
VCs invest in emerging technologies like virtual reality and "artificial intelligence" because there is the potential to become a fixture of a small economy and grow with it. The time to do this with web browsers was in the 90s. The browser market isn't growing, and it is already cornered by one of the largest monopolies in the world. They can't be undercut on price (Chrome is effectively a loss-leader to promote Google's other properties). They can't be outspent on R&D. If you are seeking VC, you need to produce a return on investment somehow, and there is no way to do that without selling out the end users in an even more devious way than Google. There is no viable capitalist development model for web browsers. It is the kind of infrastructure which needs to be funded with grants or state funding.
I don't believe Arc was ever meant to be profitable. Their company seems to be based around getting sold to someone similar to how Skiff email was sold. Possibly Apple because of how the CEO was comparing his company to Apple. Plus the whole Swift Development thing they did to "Disrupt the Market" instead of just using Javascript like a normal person. And their product was only available for Mac and IOS for most of its life with the Windows build being dogshit and coming out years after the Mac build. So they literally didn't develop their product for the biggest market. These guys had zero long term vision.
It was clear when they ran influencer marketing on youtube, that there was a lot of marketing money, and the hype was artificial. They chose people who didn't know any other browsers existed other than chrome and firefox. Like they were surprised of tiniest feature that's not on chrome but were mature in browsers like vivaldi and others.
Kind of feels bad because it was the only good Chromium Browser
looks like you bought into that hype. Vivaldi is way more customizable and feature rich than Arc.
I have been liking Zen too. Hopefully it lasts!
It was legitimately better to use with tab management and the command bar along with a lot of small yet powerful features that just worked. I still used Firefox as my main browser on PC+Android and used Arc only for work/study.
I've fully switched to Zen now which is promising and open source.
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