Aral Balkan
“We’re a team of founders who sold their last company, ex-Instagram engineers, former Heads of Design at Tesla and Medium, multiple Google Chrome alums, a founding engineer of Amazon S3, alumni from Snap, Slack and Pinterest, and so many other people who have done it before.”
Fuck no. No, thank you. Why do you think this would in any way make me want to use your browser?
#arc #theBrowserCompany #SiliconValley #surveillanceCapitalism #peopleFarming #BigTech
Aral Balkan
@niko Only it’s not even an apology… they’re proud of it.
Niko :comunismo:
@aral this sounds like the "i've changed" version of the toxic ex-boyfriend wanting to return to his old relationship...
Aral Balkan
@lattera Darn it, Shawn, you just went and ruined their big reveal :)
Shawn Webb
@aral I'm gonna assume it's an efficient robust, enhanced quantum metachain replication browser that tightly integrates web3.11 for skynet groups with optional, but highly recommend, augmented reality drone functionality.
Aral Balkan
@robertpi Priorities, Robert, priorities… ;P
Robert Pickering
@aral agree but tabs on the left hand side instead of the top is a good idea though :D
Aral Balkan
@leonp Nice post, Leon. Spot on. Exactly the question we should be asking of “startups” over and over again.
PS. In my experience if they aren’t telling you how they’re going to make money, they’re telling you how they’re going to make money.
Leon Paternoster
@aral Couldn’t agree more https://www.thisdaysportion.com/posts/the-arc-browser-sounds-interesting-but-i-can-t-tell-how-it-ll-make-its-money/
Aral Balkan
@lolzac Hey, why change a winning formula, amirite?
🤬
Zac
@aral So where is their profit making step in all of this? I assume more data gathering and aggregation?
Aral Balkan
@netopwibby $18M in VC, no stated business model, and folks proudly associated with those companies… Not a leap at all. At least for those of us outside the Silicon Valley bubble.
This is textbook surveillance capitalism.
area51.👽/
@aral People who know how to design and build a browser are somehow evil? Quite a leap.
These people *left* corpo jobs, did they not?
Aral Balkan
@chrismckee Wait for it… ;)
chrismckee
@aral at least it doesn't say web3
Aral Balkan
@filipesm Their investors will be happy to know after spending $18M.
Now how are they going to get ten times that money back (at least)?
Filipe
@aral I use Arc and it's a pretty good browser for my use case :(
Wish it would be open source though
Aral Balkan
Simon 🌻
@filipesm i’ve been using it for about 4 months as my main browser. I really like it.
Aral Balkan
Bram Gotink
@aral You're not wrong, but... it's by far the best browser I've ever used. They're shaking up the browser UI which has been stagnant since the introduction of the tab almost twenty years ago.
Arc makes browsing feel more natural, and I can't wait for other browsers to pick up on what Arc is getting right and integrating it into their own designs.
I'd especially love if a certain browser not built by surveillance capitalists would do this, because that browser can definitely use a boost.
Bram Gotink
@aral Currently all development on major browsers is paid for by surveillance capitalists and that's far from ideal.
Browsers are *user agents*, they should represent the interests of the person using the browser.
It is an incredible failure of the web that we entrust this responsibility onto Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
Aral Balkan
@bram It’s not a failure of the web, it’s a failure of capitalism. Or, if we’re precise about it, the success of capitalism.
Max Wainwright
@aral ”While all of our other software tools are changing […]the browser largely still does what it did twenty-five years ago.”
Yesh not buying it. Speaking of buying, what are they selling? Not software I imagine.
Aral Balkan
@maxwainwright Likely not, no.
Aral Balkan
@deivudesu Well they apparently have $18M in VC so it must have worked :)
デイヴ
@aral "Oops. we accidentally inserted a slide from our VC pitch into our marketing material…"
Aral Balkan
Alan Ralph 🇬🇧🍎
@aral I've been trying out Arc for about a week. It reminds me a lot of Vivaldi: many genuinely good & useful features hampered by all the extra baggage tacked on.
Unfortunately, right now its Chromium underpinnings show through if you poke deep enough, and its separate profiles seem superficially like Firefox's Containers but go way deeper by separating *everything* including browser extensions.
Big Red Flag: it can import from other browsers... but not export. Roach motel? No thanks.
Aral Balkan
@netopwibby Enjoy the browser and enjoy their exit (if they “succeed.”) This ain’t my first rodeo.
Good day to you, sir :)
area51.👽/
@aral You've never watched any of their videos, clearly. Not sure how *you* would develop a business model around a browser but they're going to be experimenting with charging for services that extend their browser, and also create a marketplace.
Building a browser is not cheap, nor easy. Mentioning big name companies on their site makes them appeal more to additional VCs...because browsers aren't easy, nor cheap.
Firefox is my main but I enjoy playing around with Arc. Go off though, enjoy.
Aral Balkan
@bbennettesq @netopwibby Does it matter? VC is VC. We know how that game is played (and how it ends).
bbennettesq :donor:
@aral @netopwibby which VCs?
Aral Balkan
@phil @netopwibby They’re not building a sustainable business. They are a startup. They have $18M in venture capital and are looking at ways to scale exponentially so they can deliver the exit (either to be sold to a much larger corporation or to the public via an IPO). There is no third option. That’s how VC and startups work.
Phil Amour
@aral @netopwibby I personally hope they are going to build a great and sustainable business. Arc is really well designed and built - I’ve sworn by safari for many years but recently fully switched to arc. I get where your pessimism is coming from but I’ll choose to stay cautiously optimistic.
Aral Balkan
@filipesm Easier said than done but, in a nutshell, yes.
The only time you have power over a VC-funded startup (or just “startup” because that’s what that word implies) is at the start, before it has scale and network effects. And the way you kill it is by not using it and not legitimising it.
Once it scales, it’s too late.
Browser? Sure, use Firefox but update your settings to protect your privacy first and remember Mozilla exists thanks to ~ half a billion dollars a year from Google.
Filipe
@aral Should we not use anything VC funded?
I mean, I'm against it in general, but should we be limiting ourselves by that much?
Do you have any browser recommendations? Firefox?
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