Latest news with #TheBrowserCompany
Techday NZ
a day ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
3 key challenges in enterprise browser adoption: Lessons from Arc's pivot
When Joshua Miller's team at The Browser Company announced they were pivoting away from Arc — their beloved, innovative browser — the tech world collectively gasped. Here was a product with passionate users, glowing reviews, and genuine innovation. Yet it still couldn't crack the enterprise adoption code. Their story reveals uncomfortable truths about why enterprises struggle with browser transitions, even when the alternative is objectively better. The muscle memory problem "Switching browsers is a big ask," Miller admitted in his letter to Arc users. But in enterprise environments, it's not just big — it's monumental. You're not convincing one person to change their habits. You're orchestrating behavioral change across thousands of employees, each with years of accumulated muscle memory. Consider what Arc discovered about feature adoption: only 5.52% of daily users utilized multiple Spaces regularly. Their GitHub Live Folders? 4.17%. Calendar Preview on Hover — a feature the team loved — attracted a mere 0.4% of users. These weren't poorly designed features. They were features that required users to think differently. And that's where enterprise adoption dies — in the gap between what's possible and what people will actually do when they're trying to get work done. Arc called it the "novelty tax" — the price users pay for learning something new. In consumer markets, early adopters happily pay this tax. They enjoy the learning curve. But in enterprises, every moment spent learning new browser features is a moment not spent on actual work. IT departments understand this implicitly. When evaluating new browsers, they're not just looking at features. They're calculating the cost of confusion multiplied by every employee, every day, until new habits form. Even a five-minute daily productivity loss across a 10,000-person company adds up to 833 hours of lost work. Every. Single. Day. This calculation almost always favors the status quo, regardless of how innovative the alternative might be. The maintenance reality check Perhaps Arc's most sobering revelation was about maintenance. "We do regular Chromium upgrades, fix security vulnerabilities, related bugs, and more," Miller explained. Just keeping a browser secure and functional requires constant vigilance. For enterprises considering alternative browsers, this creates a dependency nightmare. You're not just adopting software — you're betting your security posture on a vendor's ability to keep pace with the relentless drumbeat of vulnerabilities and patches. Arc managed it, but at what cost? And what happens when the next innovative browser company can't? The AI fragmentation accelerant Just as enterprises were settling into a Chrome-dominated world, AI shattered the landscape again. Miller predicts "traditional browsers, as we know them, will die." He's not wrong. Chat interfaces are already acting like browsers. Different roles need different AI capabilities. The one-size-fits-all browser era is ending. This fragmentation makes enterprise standardization impossible. Your developers want AI-powered coding browsers. Sales wants CRM-integrated browsers. Executives want different AI assistants. Forcing everyone into one browser isn't just impractical — it actively hampers productivity. The path forward The Arc story teaches us that enterprise browser strategy must evolve. Instead of trying to standardize on one perfect browser — a goal that Arc proved is impossible — enterprises need browser-agnostic security layers. Protection that follows users across browsers, not solutions tied to specific platforms. Because in the end, the choice of browser is increasingly out of IT's hands — and that might not be a bad thing.
TechCrunch
5 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
X changes its terms to bar training of AI models using its content
Social network X has changed its developer agreement to prevent third parties from using the platform's content to train large language models. In an update on Wednesday, the company added a line under 'Reverse Engineering and other Restrictions,' a subsection of restrictions on use: 'You shall not and you shall not attempt to (or allow others to) […] use the X API or X Content to fine-tune or train a foundation or frontier model,' it reads. This change comes after Elon Musk's AI company xAI acquired X in March — understandably, xAI wouldn't want to give its competitors free access to the social platform's data without a sale agreement. In 2023, X changed its privacy policy to use public data on its site to train AI models. Last October, it made further changes to allow third parties to train their models. Reddit has also put in place safeguards against AI crawlers, and last month, The Browser Company added a similar clause to its AI-focused browser Dia's terms of use.
Android Authority
27-05-2025
- Business
- Android Authority
Arc enters maintenance mode as The Browser Company shifts focus to new browser
Andy Walker / Android Authority TL;DR Active development on the Arc browser has stopped. The Browser Company is now shifting its focus to a new product called Dia. Arc isn't shutting down, but the team is no longer building new features for it. Last year, The Browser Company announced that it would shift its focus from its innovative Arc browser to a new product. However, as the team worked on this new project, they also planned to continue working on Arc. Now active development on Arc has ceased. In a blog post, CEO Josh Miller writes that his company has stopped active development on the Arc browser. The company isn't shutting Arc down, but they are no longer building new features for the browser. However, they will still do regular updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities. According to Miller, Arc fell short of expectations because 'for most people, Arc was simply too different, with too many new things to learn, for too little reward.' He also believes that the browser 'lacked cohesion — in both its core features and core value.' As mentioned earlier, the company has pivoted to a new product. True to the company name, this new product is also a browser, and its name is Dia. What separates Dia from Arc is that this browser is centered around AI. Miller explains that his company sees Dia 'as an opportunity to fix what we got wrong with Arc.' Dia is currently being tested in alpha, but the company plans to open up access to Arc members at a later date. Miller also touches a little on Arc's future. Apparently, the company considered selling the software or going open source. Although going open source would likely make a lot of users happy, it would be a difficult decision for The Browser Company. The reason is that Arc is built on top of an internal SDK that Dia also relies on, so going open source with Arc would also mean going open source with Dia. While the company decided against these options for now, it hasn't ruled out these possibilities in the future. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
The Verge
27-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
The Browser Company explains why it stopped developing Arc
The Browser Company has said repeatedly that it's not getting rid of the Arc browser as it moves onto its new AI-centric Dia browser. But what the company also not going to do is develop new features for it. A new blog post from CEO Josh Miller explains why, and what happens next. The Arc browser was a big rethink of what browsers should be like, and it has dedicated users, including yours truly. But a lot of the reasons for ceasing Arc's development that Miller gives in the blog — like that it's too complicated to go mainstream, that it was slow and unstable at times (true!), or that The Browser Company wants to recenter the experience on AI — he also gave back in October. Why not just roll Dia into Arc? One big thing Miller mentions is security. Arc has had at least one big security issue: a security researcher discovered a vulnerability last year that The Browser Company quickly patched, but which let attackers insert arbitrary code into a users' browser session just by knowing their user ID. According to Miller, The Browser Company has now grown its security engineering team from one person to five. This focus is particularly important, he writes, as AI agents — AI systems that carry out tasks autonomously — become more prevalent. As for what this all means for Arc and its users, Miller still insists that the browser won't go away. Arc will still get security and bug fixes, and will be tweaked as the Chromium code it's based on is updated. But he also says The Browser Company isn't going to open-source or sell Arc, because in addition to Chromium, it's built on a custom infrastructure that also underpins Dia. He says the company would like to open the browser up someday, but not until 'it no longer puts our team or shareholders at risk.'
The Verge
27-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
May 27, 2025 at 4:46 AM EDT
The Browser Company won't open-source Arc (yet). After announcing its second browser, Dia, last year, the company stopped developing new features for original breakout Arc. Now CEO Josh Miller explains why, and admits he considered either selling or open-sourcing the software. Neither is on the table right now (because it would require giving up their custom development kit, or 'secret sauce'), but 'that doesn't mean it'll never happen.' Dia is still in alpha testing, but will open up to Arc members next. Letter to Arc members 2025 [
