Stop
me
if
this
sounds
familiar:
The
Browser
Company
is
building
a
browser
that
it
thinks
can
make
your
internet
life
a
little
more
organized,
a
little
more
useful,
and
maybe
even
a
little
more
delightful.
It
has
new
ideas
about
tabs,
and
what
your
browser
can
do
on
your
behalf.
I’ve
heard
this
story
before!
But
the
browser
that
Browser
Company
CEO
Josh
Miller
wants
to
talk
about
when
he
calls
me
on
Thursday
isn’t
Arc,
the
product
he
and
his
team
have
been
working
on
for
the
last
five
years.
It’s
not
Arc
2.0,
either,
even
though
Miller
has
been
talking
publicly
about
Arc
2.0
for
a
while
now.
It’s
an
entirely
new
browser.
And
for
Miller
and
The
Browser
Company,
it’s
a
chance
to
get
back
to
building
the
future
of
browsers
they
set
out
to
create
in
the
first
place.
A
strange
thing
has
happened
over
the
last
couple
of
years,
Miller
says.
Arc
has
grown
fast
—
users
quadrupled
this
year
alone
— but
it
has
also
become
clear
that
Arc
is
never
going
to
be
a
truly
mainstream
product.
It’s
too
complicated,
too
different,
too
hard
to
get
into.
“It’s
just
too
much
novelty
and
change,”
Miller
says,
“to
get
to
the
number
of
people
we
really
want
to
get
to.”
User
interviews
and
data
have
convinced
the
company
that
this
is
a
power-user
tool,
and
always
will
be.
On
the
other
hand,
the
people
who
use
Arc
tend
to
love
Arc.
They
love
the
sidebar,
they
love
having
spaces
and
profiles,
they
love
all
the
customization
options.
Generally
speaking,
those
users
have
also
settled
into
Arc
—
Miller
says
they
don’t
want
new
features
as
much
as
they
just
want
their
browser
to
be
faster,
smoother,
more
secure.
And
fair
enough!
So
The
Browser
Company
faced
a
situation
many
companies
encounter:
they
had
a
well-liked
product
that
was
never
going
to
be
a
game-changer.
Rather
than
try
to
build
the
next
thing
into
the
current
thing,
and
risk
both
alienating
the
people
who
like
it
and
never
reaching
the
people
who
don’t,
the
company
decided
to
just
build
something
new.
Arc
is
not
dying,
Miller
says.
He
says
that
over
and
over,
in
fact,
even
after
I
tell
him
the
YouTube
video
the
company
just
released
sounds
like
the
thing
companies
say
right
before
they
kill
a
product.
It’s
just
that
Arc
won’t
change
much
anymore.
It’ll
get
stability
updates
and
bug
fixes,
and
there’s
a
team
at
The
Browser
Company
dedicated
to
those.
“In
that
sense,”
Miller
says,
“it
feels
like
a
complete-ish
product.”
Most
of
the
team’s
energy
and
time
will
now
be
dedicated
to
starting
from
scratch.
“Arc
was
basically
this
front-end,
tab
management
innovation,”
Miller
says.
“People
loved
it.
It
grew
like
a
weed.
Then
it
started
getting
slow
and
started
crashing
a
lot,
and
we
felt
bad,
and
we
had
to
learn
how
to
make
it
fast.
And
we
kind
of
lost
sight,
in
some
ways,
of
the
fact
that
we’ve
got
to
do
the
operating
system
part.”
The
plan
this
time
is
to
build
not
just
a
different
interface
for
a
browser,
but
a
different
kind
of
browser
entirely
—
one
that
is
much
more
proactive,
more
powerful,
more
AI-centric,
more
in
line
with
that
original
vision.
Call
it
the
iPhone
of
web
browsers,
or
the
“internet
computer,”
or
whatever
other
metaphor
you
like.
The
idea
is
to
turn
the
browser
into
an
app
platform.
Miller
still
wants
to
do
it,
and
he
wants
to
do
it
for
everyone.
What
does
that
look
like?
Miller
is
a
bit
vague
on
the
details.
The
new
browser,
which
Miller
intimates
could
launch
as
soon
as
the
beginning
of
next
year,
is
designed
to
come
with
no
switching
costs,
which
means
among
other
things
that
it
will
have
horizontal
tabs
and
fewer
ideas
about
organization.
The
idea
is
to
“make
the
first
90
seconds
effortless”
in
order
to
get
more
people
to
switch.
And
then,
slowly,
to
reveal
what
this
new
browser
can
do.
Miller
has
a
couple
of
favorite
examples
of
how
a
browser
might
help
you
get
stuff
done,
which
he’s
said
to
me,
on
Decoder,
and
elsewhere
in
recent
months.
There’s
the
teacher
who
spends
hours
copying
and
pasting
data
between
enterprise
apps;
the
Shopify
sellers
who
spend
too
much
time
looking
up
order
numbers
and
then
pasting
them
into
customer-support
emails.
Those
are
the
sorts
of
things
that
a
browser,
with
access
to
all
your
web
apps
and
browsing
data,
could
begin
to
do
on
your
behalf.
And
with
AI
tools
like
the
new
“Computer
use”
feature
from
Anthropic,
that
kind
of
thing
is
beginning
to
become
automated
and
possible.
Designing
a
browser
that
is
both
accessible
to
everyone
and
a
completely
new
thing
won’t
be
easy.
The
Browser
Company
tried
it
once
already,
and
ended
up
here.
But
Miller
feels
good
about
having
built
a
good
browser
over
the
last
five
years.
Now
it’s
time
to
get
back
to
the
real
job.
(Originally posted by David Pierce)
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