Browser companies stop actively developing ARC and switch to new AI-centric products
Browser companies have stopped actively developing the popular ARC web browser. There will still be updates to resolve security issues, but new features may not be added to the product.
“For most people, the arc is completely different, there are too many new things to learn and too few rewards,” Miller said. He also said that the browser “lacks cohesion in both its core characteristics and core values.”
Instead, the company shifted its focus to a new product called DIA, which is some kind of browser that is powered by AI. DIA was once and described as “a brand new environment – built on top of a web browser”.
The demonstration shows that DIA helps users write the next sentence in paragraphs while searching facts about topics from the wider Internet. It also shows that automatically grab Amazon links to insert in a briefly described email and perform relatively complex operations according to user prompts. Some of this feels like an extension of what the company has done in the mobile version of ARC browser.
DIA is currently testing with an Alpha build, but will be open to current ARC members in the near future. Miller said the company is “close to DIA as an opportunity to solve our problems with ARC”.
The browser company has considered sales or open source arcs, but is not doing anything so drastic at the moment. The open source version of the browser will make many current users happy, but Miller says it will be a challenge as it is built on top of the internal SDK, which is also a core component of DIA. Open source one will basically open source the other. “That doesn’t mean it will never happen,” Miller said.
