Another great product killed

A few days ago, on Substack, The Browser Company ↗ wrote a Letter to Arc members 2025 ↗ telling us what we all probably knew was coming all along - Arc is no longer goign to be developed and is being sunset.

This was the only likely outcome if we’re honest with ourselves. I resisted starting to use Arc when it first started blowing up online because of this very reason. If I found that I loved it and there were some killer features not available elsewhere, then when it almost certainly died, I would be particularly irritated about it. Well, here we are.

I eventually caved and started using it, and got hooked fairly quickly. There are lots of small things I have liked about Arc. Side bar tabs took me some time to get used to, but now I really prefer it. Split view with 2 tabs - kind of a weird power user thing, but now I find I use it at least once a week, often more. I didn’t really care about the AI features, it was the browser that I loved. The killer feature that is truly killing me - They added the keyboard shortcut ⌘ + Shift + C to copy the current URL you are on. It would even automatically strip trackers from the URL string if there were any.

I can’t tell you how much I use this now, and everything else feels broken by comparison. I’ve found a couple of Chrome extensions that try to mimic this, but as of yet, I can’t find any that reliably work. If anyone has suggestions here, please let me know.

Maybe they are right. Maybe the browser really does need a full re-think for the “AI Era”. I kind of don’t think so, but wouldn’t bet too much money that I am right. Dia sounds like a big risk. I personally want to try it, but almost certainly don’t want to use it as a daily driver. Hope I’m proven wrong, and if so I hope they can stick around for that. Killing this off, regardless of the reasons has lost a lot of trust from me, even though it’s not surprising. I really hate coming to rely on a tool just to have the VC bro’s not happy with it if it can’t take over everything for everyone and kill it off.

For what it’s worth, I would have 100% paid for Arc to keep using it. I’d probably get it for all of our employees at work too, particularly if they started adding some basic work controls to it.

What a waste of a great product.