Last week, The Browser Company, a startup that makes the Arc web browser, launched a sleek new iPhone app called Arc Search. Instead of displaying links, its new “Search for Me” feature reads the first handful of pages and summarizes them into a single custom Arc-formatted web page that uses large language models from OpenAI and others. If a user clicks on any of the actual pages, Arc Search blocks ads, cookies, and trackers by default. Arc's efforts to reinvent web browsing have received almost universal acclaim. But in recent days, “Browse for Me” earned The Browser Company its first online backlash.
For decades, websites have served ads and forced people who visit them to pay subscriptions. Monetizing traffic is one of the main ways most creators on the web continue to make a living. Reducing the need for people to visit real websites deprives creators of compensation for their work and discourages them from publishing anything.
“Web creators try to share their knowledge and receive support while doing it,” tweeted Ben Goodger, a software engineer who helped create Firefox and Chrome. “I understand how this helps users. How does it help creators? Without them there is no web…” After all, if a web browser extracts all the information from web pages without users needing to visit them, why would anyone bother creating websites in the first place?
The backlash has led the company's co-founder and CEO, Josh Miller, to question the fundamental nature of how the web is monetized. Miller, who was previously chief product officer in the White House and worked at Facebook after it acquired his previous startup, Branch, said Goodger says the way creators monetize websites needs to evolve. He too said PlatformsCasey Newton said that generative ai presents an opportunity to “shake up the stagnant oligopoly that governs much of the web today,” but admitted that he didn't know how the writers and creators who created the actual website he created would be compensated. your browser extracts . “This completely disrupts the economics of publishing on the Internet,” she admitted.
Miller declined to speak to Engadget, and The Browser Company did not respond to Engadget's questions.
Arc differentiates itself from other web browsers by fundamentally rethinking how web browsers look and work since it was released to the general public in July of last year. It did this by adding features like the ability to split multiple tabs vertically and offering a picture-in-picture mode for Google Meet video conferencing. But for the past few months, Arc has been ai-browser-mac-ios” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:rapidly adding;cpos:6;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>adding quickly ai-powered features such as automatic web page summaries, ChatGPT integration, and giving users the option to change their default search engine to Perplexity, a Google rival that uses ai to provide answers to search queries by summarizing web pages in a chat-style interface and providing small quotes to sources. The “Search for Me” feature puts Arc right in the middle of one of the AIs ai-art-generators-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:biggest ethical quandaries;cpos:7;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>biggest ethical dilemmas: Who pays creators when ai products copy and reuse their content?
“The best thing about the Internet is that someone who is very passionate about something creates a website about what they love,” tech entrepreneur and blogging pioneer Anil Dash told Engadget. “This new Arc feature mediates that and diminishes it.” in a mail On Threads, shortly after Arc launched the app, Dash criticized modern search engines and ai chatbots that sucked up content from the Internet and aimed to prevent people from visiting websites, calling them “deeply destructive.”
It's easy, Dash said, to blame the pop-ups, cookies and intrusive ads that power the economic engine of the modern web as the reason browsing now seems glitchy. And there may be signs that users are adapting to the concept of being presented with summarized information using large language models rather than manually clicking through multiple web pages. On Thursday, Miller tweeted that people chose “Search for me” instead of the normal Google search in Arc Search on mobile devices for about 32 percent of all queries. The company is currently working on making it the default search experience and also bringing it to your desktop browser.
“It's not intellectually honest to say this is better for users,” Dash said. “We're only focused on the short-term benefit to the user and not on the idea that users want to be fully informed about the impact they are having on the entire digital ecosystem by doing this.” Succinctly summarizing this double-edged sword, a food blogger tweeted on Miller, “As a consumer, this is fantastic. As a blogger, I'm a little scared.”
Last week, Matt Karolian, vice president of platforms, research and development at The Boston Globe, typed “top Boston news” into Arc Search and hit “Search for me.” Within seconds, the app scanned local Boston news sites and presented a list of headlines containing local events and weather updates. “News organizations are going to lose their minds over Arc Search,” Karolian aware in Threads. “It will read your journalism, summarize it for the user… and then if the user clicks on a link, it will block the ads.”
Local news publishers, Karolian told Engadget, rely almost entirely on selling ads and subscriptions to readers who visit their websites to survive. “When technology platforms come along and disintermediate that experience without considering the impact it could have, it's deeply disappointing.” Arc Search includes featured links and citations to the websites it summarizes from. But Karolian said this is beside the point. “It doesn't take into account the consequences of what happens when products like this are released.”
Arc Search is not the only service that uses ai to summarize information from web pages. Google, the world's largest search engine, now offers ai-generated summaries of user queries at the top of its search results, something experts have recommended. ai-google-search_n_6452a48ee4b0fbfe50a095d0″ rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:previously called;cpos:12;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>previously called “a bit like dropping a bomb right in the center of the information nexus.” Arc Search, however, goes one step further and removes search results entirely. Meanwhile, Miller has continued to tweet throughout the controversy, posting vague reflections about websites in an “ai-first Internet” while simultaneously launching products based on concepts it certainly hasn't figured out yet.
In a ai-search-arc-galaxy-s24-spatial-video-vergecast” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank” data-ylk=”slk:recent episode;cpos:14;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link “>recent episode of The Vergecast that Miller appeared on, compared what Arc Search could do to the economics of the web to what Craigslist did to the business models of print newspapers. “I think it's absolutely true that Arc Search and the fact that we eliminate the clutter and the nonsense and make you faster and get you what you need in much less time is objectively good for the vast majority of people. and It is also true that it breaks something,” he says. “It breaks the exchange of values a little. “We're dealing with a revolution in the way software and computers work and that's going to mess up some things.”
karolian from The world said that the behavior of technology companies that apply ai to content on the web reminded him of a monologue delivered by Ian Malcolm, one of the protagonists of Jurassic Park to the park's creator, John Hammond, about applying the power of technology without considering its impact: “Their scientists were so concerned about whether they could or couldn't that they didn't stop if they had to.”
