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Arc Browser 1.0

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Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#111

Post by fragmede »

olliej wrote: post #108
bambax wrote: post #30

From https://www.protocol.com/browser-company > Agrawal decided early on not to try and rebuild the whole browser stack, and based Arc on Chromium like everyone else. Ladybird this ain't. More like YACI (yet another chromium implementation).

Seriously the fact the "I made a chrome wrapper" is apparently worth millions in VC funding remains absurd to me.

There's value on the wrapper around the rendering engine. Presumably you don't use the raw engine, and use many of the UX features provided by your chosen wrapper (of which there are many). Things like tabs and extensions, hell even having history, settings, cookies, and a back button are UX niceties a raw engine doesn't necessarily provide. So the wrapper is important; making a better wrapper is thus a worthwhile endeavor. Extensions only go so far, and if ManifestV3 ever lands, and stops ad-blocking extensions from functioning, it's easy to see a hypothetical consumer-focused browser that restored that functionality, or had it natively would easily be worth millions.

The only question is if they can actually make money, and the kind of money that VC investment demands at that. Opera, the browser company had revenue of around $380 million last quarter, but if you don't use their browser, which is also "just" a chrome wrapper, you'd never know it.

To put it another way, Linux distros; Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc, are all "just" wrappers around the Linux Kernel. Yet "I made a Linux Kernel wrapper" is worth at least a billion, in the case of Red Hat. If you never come near that distro, you might not even see a reason for its value, but you can't argue with their sales numbers.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#112

Post by dekatron »

rmdashrfv wrote: post #90

This is going to sound like a negative comment but I promise it's not ... Something really gets under my skin with the way they talk about Arc on their website. There is nothing on their website that means anything. Previously the headline of their website was literally "Arc is a browser". Are you kidding? It then went on to say that it's everything I care about. Really? How is that? What do I care about? Are you sur…

I see it as marketing that tries to make you feel like you want the browser, without telling you what actually makes it great. You can attract users with hype and FOMO, but I'm not sure how long those users will stay...

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#113

Post by asadotzler »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #76

If I'm not mistaken Arc is also a closed source browser. The company has raised $18M since 2020. How are they expecting to make that RoI for their investors? Monetisation for browsers is incredibly hard, and doing it in a way that respects the end user is even harder. Curious to see their play.

It's not hard. Put a search box or three in the browser and make google and bing money. If you get users, you get money, it's that simple. Arc's problem isn't a business model, it's a user base. Firefox makes half a billion dollars a year in search revenue and a browser 1/10th that size could pay off $18M in debt in a few months.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#114

Post by thiht »

I’ve used Arc as my main browser on my work laptop for the last few months and I love it! It solves pain points I’ve actively tried to solve with Firefox, but couldn’t.

It’s no surprise HN is skeptical about « yet another browser », so here’s what I like specifically about Arc:

- it supports tab tiling. I can see 2 tabs next to one another easily. This is NOT solved with window tiling, it’s clunky and clutters the space.

- it’s vertical tab support is good, and beautiful. Firefox also has vertical tabs via Sidebery and TreeStyleTab, but it’s pretty awful. It hacks on side panels to implement something looking like tabs, but the look and feel honestly sucks

- theming is very easy and beautiful. Also it works by « space »

- lots features dedicated to avoiding tab cluttering:

1. Tabs can auto close when inactive

2. Links that should open a new tab don’t open a new tab by default, they open a pop-in that I can expand to a dedicated tab if I want

3. Links outside of Arc (in a mail client, in a terminal…) don’t open a new tab, they open in a unique Arc window (Little Arc), and I can expand them in a dedicated tab if I want

4. Spaces and profiles allow to organize the tabs properly

- it also integrates with a few websites, for example it can display infos directly on some non-open tabs. On my GitHub tabs, it shows the number of PRs awaiting my review. If I hover on my Google Agenda tab, it display a small agenda for the day without opening a tab

I’m sure I forget a few things that I like. None of these features individually would make me switch to Arc, but seeing all of it at once made me try it, and I don’t regret it.

Also their release notes are fun to read.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#115

Post by thiht »

neontomo wrote: post #67

I've been using it a few months now. It does some things really well - others not. Great: - Picture in Picture mode automatically when switching tabs from YT, Soundcloud, etc - Swiping the trackpad with two fingers to switch profiles instantly - Clean interface - Clicking links opens a small window for you to quickly check the content, and if you want to continue you can maximise it, or you click the page in the back…

> The way you pin extensions is a bit annoying

Agree with that one. They’re struggling a bit to find a good place to put extensions. The latest iteration is fine, but still not great.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#116

Post by zzo38computer »

dbcooper wrote: post #78

Anyone tried Kagi's WebKit based browser? https://browser.kagi.com/

Many of the ideas looks like good idea.

Zero telemetry is good.

A suspend feature, like the low power mode, is good idea.

To edit text on page, I think that the web developer menu is many browsers would be suitable for such a purpose, and a separate menu for that seems unnecessary to me.

Allow copy/paste is good, although I would do it a bit differently. Similarly like many spreadsheet programs have the option for manual or auto calculation, to do that for web pages also; if set to manual calculation mode then nothing is calculated or sent to the server until you push send or recalculate, and most events are suppressed, so it cannot prevent you to copy/paste, nor can it spy on data that you have entered but chosen to not send yet. It would also improve speed and less power, and avoid problems with some forms that will put in a number automatically if you erase the number and make it difficult to enter the correct number due to that. So, it would solve ten problems at once.

"Open Page in Internet Archive" may be useful, but seems to me should be an extension rather than a built-in feature (although it could be an extension which is included by default).

However, some things that would be good to have in a web browser would be: User controlled request/response headers (this can make many other settings unnecessary, e.g. language, as well as anything that can be controlled by the Content-Security-Policy header, etc). Add user styles and user scripts (without needing to package an extension). Be able to use native code extensions (which must be installed manually and cannot be installed from the web service). Relative location bar mode. ARIA mode.

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#117

Post by dang »

Related:

Arc from the Browser Company - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34795780 - Feb 2023 (3 comments)

What's Good About the Arc Browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33932045 - Dec 2022 (6 comments)

Thoughts on Arc Browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33539549 - Nov 2022 (83 comments)

The Browser Company’s Darin Fisher thinks it’s time to reinvent the browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33414565 - Oct 2022 (90 comments)

Arc Browser Company: Chrome and Safari face a new challenger - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31544988 - May 2022 (125 comments)

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#118

Post by 1023bytes »

dns_snek wrote: post #105

How is "The browser company" planing to make a return for their VC investors? In other words, when is the rug pull coming and what is it going to look like?

I believe they want to monetize business customers, adding features for collaboration

Re: Arc Browser 1.0

#119

Post by esafak »

I got both Arc and SigmaOS and ended up splitting my time between the status quo, Firefox, and SigmaOS. SigmaOS is fast and has an interesting concept but I have two decades of muscle memory with Firefox and SigmaOS uses a completely different set of shortcuts, which are admittedly reasonable on paper.
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