Arc Browser 1.0

Are you sure it is not product placement?

Don’t think it’s much different to use a closed source application than it is to use an open source app that somebody else compiled and put into your systems package repository.

Orion and Kagi (subscription search engine) are both great products, been using them for over a year, though I main FF.

This is due to a number of things, like the degree of UI polish and a UX I personally find very intuitive, but I think the biggest factor comes down to their features around tab management. Namely the following:

1. Tabs closing automatically by default unless explicitly pinned 2. Being able to group pinned tabs into folders 3. Pinned tabs remembering their original state (e.g. if I pin a tab, then navigate to some other page, I can click the favicon to return to the original page I pinned) 4. The ability to rename tabs to make them more meaningful 5. Organizing tabs into an easily-collapsible sidebar 6. Having multiple spaces for different "contexts"

These features may not be particularly novel, and I'm sure they could be easily replicates w/ extensions or add-ons, but the fact that things work like this by default and are super easy to manage feels pretty fantastic.

As an example, I recently started rewriting my neovim config, and created a new space called "neovim config" so I could quarantine the tab clutter away from my normal browsing. Then I pinned the GitHub page for my old config so I could reference it easily. And lastly I created folders for "installed plugins", "required plugins" and "optional plugins" to help me organize the GitHub pages of all the plugins I've already installed, plan to install, or merely want to test out. Then if I run into any bugs or need to reference Lua syntax I can open a bunch of ephemeral tabs to stack overflow or whatever and easily clean them up once I'm done.

I know I'm probably sounding like an Arc shill at this point, but I do genuinely feel like Arc is helping me get this work done more efficiently whereas I feel like just about any other browser would be getting in my way. The simplest way I could describe it is it's almost like Trello and Safari had a baby that somehow inherited the best qualities of each, with none of the drawbacks.

They won’t be making anywhere near 1/10th of what Firefox makes, even with 1/10th of the user base, because those are highly specialised contracts.

Google typically won’t touch you at all (although the founders connections may help them here, but I could see that upsetting some of Google’s business partners). Almost every Google search partnership is a legacy one.

With Bing, you’re looking at a standard revenue share, of which they take a cut, and you’re at the whim of seasonality, not a fixed sum as say Firefox has. Then, the investors won’t just want their investment back; they’ll want a proper return as well.

Like I’ve said, the monetization opportunities that respect the user are hard.

Avast made a killing with their browser, and they did that by selling user data.

The fact that they’re a closed source browser does not lend them any favours.