Last week, The Browser Company, the startup behind the Arc web browser, released a slick new iPhone app called Arc Search. Instead of displaying links, its brand new “Browse for Me” feature reads the first few pages and uses a large language model like OpenAI to pull them into a single custom-built Arc-formatted web page. Summarize on page. Arc Search blocks ads, cookies, and trackers by default if the user clicks through to the actual page. Arc’s efforts to reimagine web browsing have received near-universal praise. But in recent days, “Browse for Me” has caused The Browser Company’s first online backlash.
For decades, websites have served advertisements and encouraged people who visit the website to pay a subscription fee. Monetizing traffic is one of the main ways most creators on the web continue to make a living. When the need for people to visit her actual website decreases, the author loses compensation for her work and loses the incentive to publish anything.
“Web creators are sharing their knowledge and gaining support in doing so,” tweeted Ben Goodger, a software engineer who contributed to the development of both Firefox and Chrome. “We understand how useful this is to users. How does it help creators? After all, what if a web browser sucks out all the information from a web page without the user actually having to visit it? Why bother creating a website in the first place?
The backlash has led company co-founder and CEO Josh Miller to question the fundamental nature of how the web is monetized. Miller, who previously served as a product director in the White House and worked at Facebook after Facebook acquired his previous startup Branch, said the way creators monetize their web pages needs to evolve. told Goodger at X.he also said platformerCasey Newton of He admitted that he did not know how he would be compensated. “This completely upends the economics of publishing on the Internet,” he acknowledged.
Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed by Engadget, and The Browser Company did not respond to Engadget’s questions.
Since its general release last July, Arc has set itself apart from other web browsers by fundamentally reimagining how web browsers look and work. This was achieved by adding features such as the ability to vertically split multiple tabs and offering picture-in-picture mode for Google Meet video conferencing. But over the past few months, Arc has rapidly added AI-powered features such as automatic web page summaries and ChatGPT integration, making users’ default search engine a rival to Google that uses AI to provide answers to their searches. We offer the option to switch to Perplexity. Summarize web pages in a chat-style interface and perform queries by providing small citations to sources. With the “Browse for Me” feature, Arc faces one of the biggest ethical quandaries with AI. If an AI product steals and reuses content, who will pay the creators?
Anil Dash, a technology entrepreneur and blogging pioneer, said, “The best thing about the Internet is that anyone who is extremely passionate about something can create a website about anything they like.” ,” technology entrepreneur and blogging pioneer Anil Dash told Engadget. “This new feature in Arc mediates and alleviates that,” Dash said in a thread shortly after Arc released the app, which siphons content from the internet and makes it difficult for people to visit websites. He criticized modern search engines and AI chatbots, which aim to stop people from doing anything, as “extremely destructive”.
Dash says it’s easy to blame the pop-ups, cookies, and intrusive ads that power the economic engine of the modern web for why modern browsing feels broken. There may also be signs that users are becoming accustomed to the concept of being presented with summarized information by a large language model, rather than manually clicking through multiple web pages. On Thursday, Miller tweeted that on mobile ArkSearch, in about 32 percent of all queries, people choose “Browse for Me” over regular Google search. The company is currently working on making this the default search experience and bringing it to desktop browsers as well.
“It’s not intellectually honest to say this is better for users,” Dash says. “We are only focused on short-term user benefits and not on the idea that users want to be well-informed about the impact they are having on the entire digital ecosystem by doing this. To summarize this double-edged sword succinctly, one food blogger tweeted at Miller: “As a consumer, this is great. As a blogger, it’s a little scary.”
Last week, Matt Karorian, vice president of platform research and development at The Boston Globe, typed “Boston top stories” into Arc Search and hit “Browse for Me.” Within seconds, the app scanned Boston’s local news sites and displayed a list of headlines with local trends and weather updates. “The press won’t care about Arc Search,” Karolian posted on his Threads. “We read out the journalism and summarize it for the user. Then, when the user clicks on the link, ads are blocked.”
Local news publishers rely almost entirely on advertising and selling subscriptions to readers who visit their websites to survive, Carolian told Engadget. “It’s a shame when a technology platform comes along and disintermediates the experience without any consideration for the impact it has.”Arc Search has a link to his website for the summary. Contains prominent links and citations. But Karolian says this is beside the point. “They’re not really thinking about what happens when they deploy a product like this.”
Arc Search isn’t the only service that uses AI to summarize information on web pages. Google, the world’s largest search engine, now displays AI-generated summaries of users’ queries at the top of search results. Experts have previously called this “like dropping a bomb at the heart of the information chain.” But Arc Search goes a step further and removes search results entirely. Meanwhile, Miller continued to tweet throughout the controversy, posting: vague thoughts We conduct research on websites in the “AI-first Internet” and at the same time release products based on concepts that are not yet organized.
A recent episode of The Vergecast with Miller compared the impact of Arc Search on the economics of the web to the impact of Craigslist on the business model of print newspapers. “It’s absolutely true that Arc Search and the fact that it cuts out the clutter and BS and makes it faster and allows you to get what you need in much less time is objectively a good thing for the vast majority of people. I think. and It is also true that it breaks something,” he says. “It breaks up the value exchange a little bit. We’re working on a revolution in how software and computers work, and that’s going to mess up some things.”
from Carolian the globe He said the actions of technology companies applying AI to content on the web reminded him of a monologue by Ian Malcolm, one of the film’s protagonists. Jurassic Park John Hammond, the park’s founder, said of applying the power of technology without considering the implications: “Scientists are so focused on what they can do that they don’t stop when they should.” There wasn’t,” he said.
