Not long ago I wrote about Arc, a new browser that I very much enjoyed. It was a breath of fresh air—alight with pops of color, focused on the details. It got the little things right and added in some new ones I didn't know I needed but soon couldn't live without. And I wasn't the only one who loved Arc; there was a time when every other tech influencer sang its praises. It was a game-changer, the rare shiny, new thing that actually lived up to the hype.

As a bonus, the team behind Arc, The Browser Company, was super communicative, frequently releasing videos on what was next and their bold, new vision for the future of browsers. So, not only were they making a great browser, they also brought us behind the scenes and made us part of the team. This was a project and people we could root for.

But unfortunately for us Arc mega-fans, it’s largely been shelved, and the team has instead decided to pour its efforts into a new, simplified, AI-powered browser named Dia. This was devastating news and, frankly, a bit confusing. Arc was a great product. People loved it. Tons of users who never imagined themselves leaving Chrome found Arc and made the switch. And it seemed to have steady user growth, so why throw all that away and start fresh?

They released a poorly received video, explaining, among other points, that vertical tabs, a style they had helped popularize, were simply too big a leap, too foreign for the average user. By their accounting, sure, Arc was beloved, but only by tech enthusiasts, and that simply wasn't enough. After that video they released one more, a promo trailer for Dia, but the previously chatty team has otherwise gone radio silent. The curtains were drawn, and it turned out we weren't on the team after all.

The reality is that The Browser Company is a VC-backed startup, and that comes with certain pros and cons. The company gets a bunch of money it can use to hire experts and build cool products, but this investment comes with a catch: venture capitalists aren't looking for decent growth; they're in search of explosive, monopoly profits. They're in the lottery ticket business, and to them, growth that would normally be respectable is like winning two dollars back on a scratcher: much ado about nothing. Countless nerds loved Arc, but this just wasn't a big enough market for their backers. So, they pivoted.

Though I'm obviously disappointed, I wish the Arc team the best, and I commend them for daringly reimagining what browsers could be and inspiring others to do the same. They did such an amazing job with Arc that I have little doubt Dia will be great in its own right, and I'll probably even try it out when it's finally available. But, I don't see myself ever switching back to one of their browsers as a daily driver. Trust, once broken, is hard to restore.

Like many Arc refugees, I've switched to Zen, an open-source Firefox fork. Zen is far from perfect. There are plenty of minor bugs here and there—a particularly annoying one is that Firefox-based browsers have trouble rendering the animations on one of the prettier websites I've developed. But, I think I'll stick with it, bugs and all. It's simple and, by and large, delivers on the "calmer internet" promise on its homepage.

There's a lot of BS in browser land these days. Chrome is disabling ad blockers, and Firefox has seemingly gone back on its commitment to privacy. In general, browsers tied to companies have started following incentives that don't align with my own. But open-source options also aren't without their risks. Maybe the contributors to Zen will get bored or just burned out on what is often thankless work, but I’ll take that gamble. At this point, I’d rather throw my lot in with an imperfect passion project than leave my fate in the hands of a corporate venture that could vanish—or violate my privacy—when business priorities shift.