Arc – a browser

After having received a very interesting comment on my post about Chrome and Google’s anti-ad-blockers policy I think I should post my thoughts about the Arc browser, which is also based on Chromium (remember – the “engine” that’s used by Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave…)

Arc is new, Arc is different, Arc has AI build in.

Arc is different for sure: Tabs are shown at the left sidebar that you can hide by pressing CTRL+S (which usually stands for ‘save’). It has a screenshot tool build in (partly or complete web site), annotation tool which works on a canvas (with sharing option), configuration tool (change colors and fonts of each website individually), ‘zap’ items on websites, share those modified websites with others publicly, use ‘spaces’ as different work spaces and last but not least it has a build in AI connection (to ChatGPT). I’ve used it to summarize websites, which is a really handy tool – and, after proof reading, proofed to be 100% correct.

There’s a catch, though

Arc wants you to sign up / sign in before you can use it (on Win/Mac). Even though it claims to protect your privacy there’s a taste of bitterness. Why, just why does one need to login? I understand the synching functionality, but I want to opt-in – I don’t even have an option to opt-out!

This is why I abandoned the idea of switching to Arc.

If you have a different view on the topic, let me know in the comments.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *