Why I'm all-in on Zen Browser

Summary

A few years ago, I moved to Arc as my default browser. I felt like everything was immediately upgraded: finally, a web browser worked how I needed it to. The interface got out of the way; it was superpowered with keyboard shortcuts that just made sense (a bit like other professional tools like Superhuman); and its profiles feature allowed me to fully sandbox my work activity away from my personal activity. It’s how I want a browser to work.Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the goals its vendor, The Browser Company, had set up for it. It was a niche tool for a certain kind of power user, which didn’t justify the company’s valuation. Had it been a product made by an independent company, I would have gladly paid for it, and it might have formed the basis of a sustainable business. But The Browser Company needed scale, and it was not to be.Instead, The Browser Company took advantage of the buzz around AI, and created a new, AI-focused browser called Dia. Rather than build these features into Arc, the company tried again: it lost most of Arc’s power user features and added AI to a browser framework that isn’t a million miles away from stock Chrome. The learning curve was removed, but so was the utility. Meanwhile, Arc is not gone, but it’s certainly on life support, with no new features planned.I tried to love Dia, but I’m not bullish about it. It really has lost the power user features that made Arc special: the excellent tab sidebar is gone and profile switching is nowhere near as fluid. But it also has far more competition: Perplexity has introduced Comet, its own AI browser, and Chrome itself has built-in Gemini features. It’s not clear why Dia would do better. And ironically, The Browser Company now charges $20/month, the same amount I would gladly have paid for Arc. Unless The Browser Company has something amazing up its sleeve, I think it’s destined for an acquisition that might see features from its own products incorporated into someone else’s.Because Dia is h...