The New Arc Browser is Coming!

Alex, I am seeing that there is a new guest on your couch while we're recording. Would you like to introduce us? Yeah, you might also hear him. It's Nemo. I was on a big quest to finding Nemo. Sorry for the English speaking audience. And we found Nemo. We found Nemo while back home in Italy over the weekend. It's not a fish? No, it's a tiny red poodle. So cute. Yeah, I hope he's quiet. I hope he doesn't bark or do anything. He's currently busy chewing on his toy. So yeah, I mean, the family is growing. And it's interesting, actually, to finally live with a dog. And even more interesting, how my whole online presence or advertising profile completely changed, right? It's enough that you buy one thing for a dog. Suddenly, like my whole Instagram feed, all the ads that I'm being served, it's all about dog insurances, dog leashes, dog toys, dog training, dog apps, dog, every single thing is dogs. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. Like, I don't want to know what happens when someone gets a kit or something. But here's the thing. I'm right now refurnishing my apartment. And I was looking for sofas. And, you know, on every fucking page, I see now advertisements for a couch, for chair. I mean, like, the internet became like full of furniture, like from one day to the other. So I'm struggling with the same issue. It's crazy. I mean, this was actually a fun thing when I was still working in consulting. Because you switch a lot of projects. And sometimes you switch also different industries, and you need to do a lot of research. And it completely destroys your algorithm, right? Like, one day, I was working on, I don't know, banking solutions for families. The next day, I was working for an insurance company, and looking at very specific health issues. The next week, I was working on fast food and going through all the fast food chains. The week after, oh, guess what? Cosmetics. Now I'm a woman googling lipsticks. It's like, yeah, I don't know. Fascinating how the internet reacts to our interests. Yeah. I mean, I wonder how the whole advertising space also changes, right? With cookies, more privacy laws, and so on and so forth. Browsers, phones, blocking, more and more tracking. I think that's, I mean... The whole affiliate program and stuff like that will become much more difficult in the future. I mean, it's a tough industry. And it's, I think, like, as an advertiser, I would somehow be, I'm not sure if I would say scared, but scared. I think it's important to look around what the big players are planning to change, like Apple, because... But that's the thing. But that's where, I mean, Apple is investing a lot. It almost feels like in cutting out Facebook. You know, it's fun fact, because I had recently a conversation with a friend. And so the big thing that Apple still can do as a move, in my opinion, is becoming a search engine, right? And as far as I know, Google is right now paying Apple shit loads of money to not do that. I think they pay like 30 billion or something like that. But I need to look up the number again. So like Google pays a lot of money to Apple and the money gets every year more and more. And at some point, Google could say, we're going to change that. But the problem is Google has a running business. So they make shit loads of money with all the advertisements. And Apple needs at least to directly start making the same money they get from Google in order to not lose money, right? So I think that's the only reason why Apple is not doing it. But maybe at some point, they are going to attack Google. And I think if that's going to happen, that will change everything. Yeah. And if you think about it, right, like the saturation that Apple has, or the reach that Apple has, is growing and is becoming bigger and bigger, right? And I think nowadays, the game when it comes down to search engines and so on, is like really also a game of operating systems, because that's where you control a lot, right? And I mean, I'm still a big Google fanboy. So despite being on Apple, I've never used Safari. I'm always on Chrome, and so on. You're on a phone, right? Yeah, always Chrome. But it's also because like my browser infrastructure, let's call it like that, is Chrome, right? So the tabs that I have on my computer, and so on, I mirror everything across the board. It has partially to do with the fact that for security reasons in our company, we had to create a company Apple ID. And the Apple ecosystem pretty much breaks the second you have like two Apple IDs, like sharing and stuff and so on gets a little bit complicated. And so I think that's still the reason. But funnily enough, as we're talking about browsers, I signed up today to the waitlist. And I mean, probably I'm just like, I sometimes feel like a boomer recently, like one of the old guys. But I signed up to this new browser. I hope I get access soon, because I'm really curious. And it's called Arc. Have you heard about Arc? I have, I think I have heard about it. Let me look it up. If you go to arc.net, you say in Google, if you go to arc.net, I actually really like the page. I mean, it's playful. Arc is a browser. And it's built by the browser company of New York, right? So I think pretty straightforward. Are you ready to let go of the old internet? And so it's like, it's built by this guy who was like, I think he started as a developer for Netscape. So like, working on browsers since almost the existence of browsers, working on browsers in 16 years. Wow. And I did actually find it interesting with something that has been around for such a long time, like browsers. It's a pretty bold move to kind of say, OK, let's launch a new browser that actually changes the existing model mindset and patterns of how you use a browser by picking actually up on a problem that emerged over the last couple of years. I mean, in the back, I would say like when we were younger and we had our first computers in the browser, you could only have a couple of windows. Suddenly, you had a couple of tabs. Suddenly, you have a lot of like, you have fast internet and you can open a ton of tabs. Now you have faster computers and RAM is also not being a problem. I mean, I look at my browser. I can't see what tabs I have open because there are just like so many and it actually fucks me up. So I think like actually going in and saying, OK, how can I rethink a browser and how can I make it more like, OK, it's a browser nowadays is notes, it's to-do's, it's things that I want to read, things that I have to remember, things that I have to share and so on and so forth. And I think like approaching it differently sounds like a really interesting problem solving exercise. 100 percent. I mean, first of all, I think they can do a worse job than Internet Explorer. Just to take that because, yeah, you know, it's not worth it at all, right? But my point is here, I believe that, let's say, what is my expectation from a browser? Because I spend a lot of time on my browser, right? I mean, even this call is happening in our browsers at the moment. And especially when we do interviews or if we have intense discussions, we also read our notes or we take notes while we're talking. So in a perfect world, in a perfect scenario, I would expect to have a browser where I can do all those things that I'm right now doing in other tabs and other windows at my computer, right? So, for example, I have Evernote open for my notes or maybe the Apple Notes app. I have maybe Slack open. I have maybe other things open. And I'm not sure how they're exactly planning to rebuild the browser, but having all those functions easier accessible within the browser would be like a game changer to me. So I think it's actually fairly straightforward. And we should follow up when we have access, if we ever do. So if maybe someone from the browser company in New York is listening here, make sure to link them. We would like to have a sneak peek and to test it out. But in a nutshell, it's just like moving from a top tab bar to a side navigation. And the side navigation allowing you to have multiple tabs. And then with some, I would call it a little bit like browser on steroids features that you can have with plugins currently, right? And to have things like, okay, I have like a list of links and I can automatically create a short quick link or website that I can share with someone. I'm currently doing the same thing with one tab if I ever need to share a set of links to people. But I think, I mean, the concept or like the execution doesn't sound like too crazy to me. Again, without having seen it. But you know what, I see also like a very cool B2B case here. Because like, let's say if you have like, I mean, we all know this G Suite application, right, that Google has. So if you and I are in the same organization for G Suites and I'm creating a new docs, I can directly share it with you. But let's imagine we have the same browser and we are part of the same company, for example, and we can easily share new tabs that we are opening and stuff like that, or that we're creating within the browser. I mean, that would be super cool. Yeah, I have to say, I'm really curious to test it. I don't know if we can see it. But I think another question. So this actually makes me think about two things. A, we quickly talked about plugins. And I think looking at plugins is still an extremely good way to find some great product ideas, actually. And it's the same like with apps. I think Apple does a lot of like product innovation by simply looking at what are the apps that are the most used and downloaded in the app store? How can we integrate it in our ecosystem? And then they launch it on their own, right? And I think Google does the same with, okay, there is a ton of like different plugins that integrate into Gmail. What are those features? And slowly, like step by step, they're adding it to their product as well. So I think that's actually an interesting aspect to look at like idea generation for potential new products. Yeah, and I think it also opens up, again, a possible platform to develop such solutions, right? Because what Google is doing at the moment is, as far as I know, they are completely redefining their policies around browser plugins, especially when it comes to ad blockers and stuff like that. Because obviously, I mean, if you have a YouTube ad blocker, the last thing Google wants is a YouTube ad blocker and other things as well. So which is kind of annoying for the people who build out their business based on that. But on the other hand, like with a creative solution that hopefully comes with that new browser experience, I see also like the opportunity for developers to maybe really find the way they develop applications and plugins. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just another thing that I want to throw in, in this context, it's actually this, like the general idea of introducing or opening up the API to external developers, right? Because I think that's kind of connected to this, okay, let's look at plugins that are being written, let's look at apps that are being built, to A, speed up feature development for you, especially when it comes to very niche segments. And B, to then like actually learn from it and to leverage it. Just a couple of other examples. Figma, since they launched a community, a ton of like, great templates and stuff are being shared that Figma can learn from. Miro, the same, like they have the community, people submit stuff. And step by step, they're adding a lot of these features back into their main application. Figma now took it a step further, right? Just like beyond templates and certain things, or the plugins, they now even have like micro apps that you can integrate while working on it, right? So I could have voting on a board, I could have a timer on a board. If you think about it from a company perspective, if I'm Figma, or if I'm a product manager at Figma, there's a ton of things that could build. There's a ton of requests, actually, from different people, where a lot of them probably are really good ideas. Nevertheless, like even with uploading and so on, as we cannot predict the future without actually testing it, you will never really have like the perfect indicator if this is then something that's going to fly. Now, especially in a segment where you do have a lot of like technological or tech savvy people who are actually able to write their own code, and so on, or to find someone to write it, why not actually investing in the possibility for a large community to write code and to submit micro apps, then writing them yourself? Because that actually is the perfect way for validation. You have a ton of people, they explore these things, they have a very niche need, they build it. And what you do is you see what works and what doesn't. So the thing is, by all this hype and all these possibilities we're discussing right now, there's like one essential question that I'm still not getting out at the moment. And that is, in my opinion, the most important question is, how do I actually make this and that's actually why I just want to throw in the question if there's a possibility of way too much hype around it. Because what is the real problem they're trying to solve? Figma? No, I'm talking about Arc now. Ah, okay. Well, I think the problem that they're trying to solve is helping to organize your browser life a little bit better. At least as an outsider, without having actually used it. That's what it feels like. Or that would be my problem. If I would have to solve my own problem, it's like... I mean, the motto of them is that they invite the new joiners to let's go off the old internet. And I'm just asking myself, what does that mean? It could be also related to Web3. I don't know. Yeah. Right. I mean, I just saw, I think a couple of days ago, there was like this new startup. Give me a second. I need to look it up. That wants to become the new stripe for Web3. What was the... It's called February. So to German. Actually, the February month. So it's called like in German, February. So they are planning to become the new stripe for Web3 applications. And actually, I think it's a very young area, this whole Web3 application stuff. But I think also there's like a big market, right? Because even though we don't have that many Web3 applications, so many big companies started developing and moving to that direction. So I think like starting an application... Sorry, startup like that. I think it's very good timing at the moment. So yeah, what I just want to say is like the old internet, what does it mean, right? But I'm now on their main company page, right? The browser.company. And I think that highlights the problem statement a little bit more. Because, okay, what they say is, whatever browser could help us make sense of it all, could a browser keep us focused, organized, and in control? And there's one sentence actually that I do like, because they explain how you use browsers and how... I mean, I feel like most people can relate to a lot of like, especially the organizational issues. And they're saying that most of the time, people blame themselves for the inefficiencies of a browser, right? Like if you have a ton of tabs open, it's you being unorganized. And I think like that's something that I observe also a lot with people in the company. Someone opens their browser and they're like, oh no, sorry for all the tabs, I was doing some research, right? And considering that a lot of people do this, it does sound like a realistic problem to help organize that a little bit better. Yeah, sure, sure. But did you know that hidden feature from Google that you can do something, that you can like create folders for your tabs? You can do that, right? But nobody knows it. I launched it like a couple of months ago, I don't think. Yeah, yeah. But it's super hit, right? You need to make a right click and then you had to tap to new group. I mean, it looks okay, but it's also not that beautiful. So yeah. I mean, they're also working on it. They're also working on it. But I don't think they're reimagining what a browser is. I think they are just like adding to the existing browser and try to make minor adjustments, which, again, are like two also very valid and different approaches, right? I think especially as an established company, you need to work on an iterative process. You need to work on improvements. You have a massive user base. People are used to use it in a specific way. So you can only afford to make minor adjustments, right? Like, okay, now you can group it, but it's still the same concept. It still works the same way. When you're starting from scratch, you have a lot more freedom to actually say, okay, let's throw something out. Let's work off from a strong vision and idea and then see how it works. And there's also much more tolerance to make mistakes. Yeah, especially with a nice beta program, which is, it's a good way to kind of launch a tool and get feedback. But yeah, I mean, we talked a lot about browsers. That wasn't really the agenda for today. Do you have any topics, anything top of your mind that you want to get off your chest? So right now, I would say, even though if many people listening to this episode, many people listening to this episode, not on a browser, make sure you press the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting tool. Yes, but you can also find us on the World Wide Web. It's product-bakery.com. Yes. There you go. Cool, Stronky. Good Alex, nice talking to you. Yeah, have a beautiful evening. And we talk next week. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.