That would be a marketing failure on their part. 
It did come up in the conversation after my article.
I certainly appreciate all the comments from people who didn’t try Arc at all, and now feel justified that they refrained…
…but from someone using it heavily, I share that feeling of being “left behind.” I’ll also add that it’s really, truly difficult to listen to Josh Miller’s long justification for ceasing development on Arc and “pivoting” to a barely-related project.
Why? Because gathering that 6-figure following, involving them on a personal and emotional level, inviting them to join in while a team of young and energetic developers builds “an entirely new way to browse the Web”—and then pulling all of that away by trying to tiptoe out of the room and distract users with Chrome updates feels dishonest and manipulative.
My grumbly self believes that (as with hordes of Mac-first developers before them) all was well until TBC looked at their adoption numbers while side-eyeing the Windows market. If it is true that the Windows version of Arc is incomplete and buggy over a year after introduction, they decided that:
- Windows Arc would never be as good an experience as Mac Arc; or
- Windows Arc was too hard to develop; but abandoning just Windows would lose face for them, so they quit.
I appreciate @ace swallowing similar feelings to lay out an assessment of Dia’s potential, but I’m not likely to trust TBC twice. And that’s a shame, because in Arc they chose to make a complex product that would satisfy power users, but in a space where there is absolutely no potential to take in even a dime. In Dia, they are making a simpler product that will have to bring revenue; either by the front door through subscriptions, or through some side doors that compromise their responses and search results.
I could be wrong about all of this, of course, but over 2 years into using Arc I’m entitled to some epithets. I will keep them to myself, naturally, but my natural intelligence is having some lively moments thinking of how I feel about TBC at this point.
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Just because Google and several others succeeded in transitioning from a free to advertiser paid for model, it doesn’t mean it will work for every company. It hasn’t stopped a lot from trying, but the success rate is low. One problem is that a lot haven’t really thought much about how their software works.
Just so. If that’s what TBC hopes to do—another “entirely new” experience that’s so simple you’ll want to pay for it—I don’t think their chances for success are high.
The alternative of an advertising-supported model on top of advertising-supported Web pages would be unbearable even if it were simple.
I am still using Arc. I am disappoint in The Browser Company. I can’t see Dia being a success. If gets any traction then the major browser makers will be able to duplicate functionality quickly and The Browser Company will be back where they started.
They say not enough people were using a lot of the functionality, but they know what was being used. Why were those not in Dia straight away? If they had made Dia, Arc lite with Dia features I may well have tried it.
Vivaldi is pretty good for me as a replacement for Arc. I use both.