Google might be just beginning the race in the AI wars, but in the battle for maintaining its place as the preferred browser, a new competitor surfaced.

ARC is a new entrant into the web browser market that claims to be a more private, more secure, and faster browser than the dominant competitors. Some of the most attractive features are built-in blockers for cookies by default and lightning-fast page load times that create a more responsive browsing experience. Because ARC is built with security in mind, it has also built-in anti-phishing protection, built-in malware scanning, and sandboxing to prevent malicious code from affecting the system. It’s highly customizable and offers the ability to change appearance, keyboard shortcuts, and other features.

Can it really take on Google Chrome with over 70% market share? It depends. To compete effectively, ARC will need to offer some compelling features that you can’t find on other browsers and require significant marketing and outreach efforts to build its user base.

I tried ARC, and it does well on features despite limitations! It solves the handling of tabs much better than Chrome or Safari. However, we know from previous browser wars that not the best-featured product wins but the one that first achieves “Dominant Design” status. In the case of browser wars, this means the best integration with a suite of Apps to make it sticky: Chrome is integrated with the Google G-Suite, Safari with IOS and Microsoft has Office and Teams and Bing-beefed-up-with-ChatGPT at their disposal. This is a tall order for ARC, and I would be very surprised if ARC ever becomes more than what DuckDuckGo is in search engines: A good product with fierce followership but never achieving massive scale.