Looks like VC money ran out so the development company is now making an AI product like everyone else. Kind of feels bad because it was the only good Chromium Browser and kind of innovative in it’s own right. I switched over fully to Zen like a month ago so I don’t really care but it’s just a classic case of tech bro tomfoolery where a company only works for hype so they can eventually sell it to someone eventually. Nobody bought this company because people make browser mods on github for free.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcBrowser/comments/1gc2fxx/arc_officially_not_getting_new_features_only/
VCs invest in emerging technologies like virtual reality and “artificial intelligence” because there is the potential to become a fixture of a small economy and grow with it. The time to do this with web browsers was in the 90s. The browser market isn’t growing, and it is already cornered by one of the largest monopolies in the world. They can’t be undercut on price (Chrome is effectively a loss-leader to promote Google’s other properties). They can’t be outspent on R&D. If you are seeking VC, you need to produce a return on investment somehow, and there is no way to do that without selling out the end users in an even more devious way than Google. There is no viable capitalist development model for web browsers. It is the kind of infrastructure which needs to be funded with grants or state funding.
I don’t believe Arc was ever meant to be profitable. Their company seems to be based around getting sold to someone similar to how Skiff email was sold. Possibly Apple because of how the CEO was comparing his company to Apple. Plus the whole Swift Development thing they did to “Disrupt the Market” instead of just using Javascript like a normal person. And their product was only available for Mac and IOS for most of its life with the Windows build being dogshit and coming out years after the Mac build. So they literally didn’t develop their product for the biggest market. These guys had zero long term vision.