"A Browser with a ChatBot": Watching the Evolution of The Browser Company Toward "AI", Whatever That Might Become
& watching the VergeCast watch The Browser Company. & watching the VergeCast say: “Imminent death of the web. Film at 11”. But this time it is really, truly, for real. The Browser Company’s Dia...
& watching the VergeCast watch The Browser Company. & watching the VergeCast say: “Imminent death of the web. Film at 11”. But this time it is really, truly, for real. The Browser Company’s Dia as an attempt at navigating the post-website era amidst the AI deluge. Yet “Chrome with a chatbot” is now merely table stakes…
Over the past year the VergeCast has become my favorite tech podcast.
Why?
Because of exchanges like this:
David Pierce: The Website-Free Future of the Web <https://youtu.be/EQNqfYs5r8c?si=yRh7VVqwIEg5fJCL>: ‘Now increasingly [Google] is: Okay, in order to take all the shitty stuff that has been created on the web to game the way the system worked, we're gonna build a new system…. And if all that stuff dies that was trying to game our old system, so be it….. [But] the question… no one will answer… [is] what happens when you also kill the good websites?… There is this big structural belief—and I think it was Demis Hassabis that said this—that we're going to… have a web… for AI agents… [that] may not even need a front end for people to look at….
Nilay Patel: One of the ways they are reckoning with it is by saying…. If you want to run a website: Great! Get your own audience. Don't be relying on Google Search to get your audience…. The media industry is addicted to Google. And there's no transition plan. It's: Oh, we're just going to kill you. And they're fine with it….
Suddenly Google is full of summaries of things that might be garbage. Or the AI itself is hallucinating. Or the good sources of information are now at war with Google, and you're not even getting them because they're in a fight. This is all just a swirl of what is going to happen….
Which brings me to like the last little piece of the puzzle, which is The Browser Company <https://thebrowser.company/>, which, David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length. They stopped making their browser. They stopped making Arc, because there's no win there for them.
David Pierce: Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out what the next bet is. They have this new browser called Dia, which is very much like, so far—I got into the beta; I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got into the beta—Holy God! Is it just Chrome with a chat bot?
Nilay Patel: And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with a chat bot?
Chrome.
And also every other browser that exists. I think, for The Browser Company, the big bet is: okay, if we can mix AI with browsing data with a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful.
David Pierce: Agreed.
Nilay Patel: Great call, Browser Company! It turns out everybody else had that idea too….
David Pierce: It's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day, every day. That doesn't appear to be the next thing, but no one knows quite what that thing is yet, because it might not be showing you web pages….
Nilay Patel: I don't think it is. That Demis Hassabis comment at I/O about what kind of web do you build for agents first? It's the whole game.We're just reading the entire web…. And we're just gonna summarize it for you and give it to you and businesses will die…. We're gonna run that whole… 20 year cycle in two minutes with web apps and agents…. Now you really do have the giant worldwide interlinked application platform, but you don't have websites…. You just have a bunch of smart databases talking to each other….
I think they've come to the conclusion, after getting beat up for three years at I/O about AI and the downstream effects on the web… "We don't care. If we don't get here, someone else will get here first, and it will be better to take the hits and survive than to try to play nice and lose."
David Pierce: That's the Mark Zuckerberg Joker story. That's what happens. You get beat up enough times that you turn into the Joker, and that's what Mark Zuckerberg did.
Nilay Patel: Something massive is happening here, as Google is adding agents to Chrome…. If you believe Google, the whole premise of a search engine is going away…. All anyone will do is take that search index and build AI products…. A year from now, the New York Times will run a story about how the web changed. And I'll be like, yeah, I listened to the VergeCast. I caught that a year ago. Because this is the moment. Apple's weird weaknesses, Google's apparent strength, all kind of built around like, where do the apps come from? How do you use them? Is the user interface just gonna be a bunch of natural language? Google's vision is that you'll search for something, it will build you an app on the fly and make a new interface to data for you, which is pretty cool….
Many things have to die for that to happen. Like, the dinosaurs were cool, mammals were cooler. Like, sorry bro, like it's over. Like the asteroid is going to hit you…. I perceive that as clearly as I can now. That's the change that's coming…
Things like this do not provide me with answers. But they do raise huge numbers of very interesting questions.
But let me focus down. The thing I want to focus on right now is this exchange:
Nilay Patel: ‘The last little piece of the puzzle, which is The Browser Company <https://thebrowser.company/>, which, David, you have talked about and profiled and covered at length.
They stopped making their browser.
They stopped making [their] Arc [<https://arc.net/> browser], because there's no win there for them.
David Pierce: Right. They're in the middle of trying to figure out what the next bet is. They have this new browser called Dia <https://www.diabrowser.com/>, which is very much like, so far—I got into the beta; I was not supposed to get into the beta, but I got into the beta—Holy God! Is it just Chrome with a chat bot?
Nilay Patel: And the thing that's happening is, do you know what's also becoming Chrome with a chat bot? Chrome. And also every other browser that exists. I think, for The Browser Company, the big bet is: okay, if we can mix AI with browsing data with a device that you spend a lot of time on, that can be very powerful.
David Pierce: Agreed.
Nilay Patel: Great call, The Browser Company! It turns out everybody else had that idea too!…
David Pierce: It's certainly true that you can build a cool browser that a bunch of power users like me will like. I like Arc a lot. I use it all day. Every day. That doesn't appear to be the next thing. But no one knows quite what that thing is yet, because it might not be showing you web pages….
Nilay Patel and David Pierce appear to be willing to give long odds against The Browser Company’s staying alive for the next five years. The determining factor, they think, is that the “Chrome, but with a ChatBot, and then build out from there” space is hugely crowded. Here comes everyone. And, where The Browser Company can put one programmer building the Next Big Thing in internet interfaces:
even the Altman-Ive io can afford to put ten programmers,
Apple and Microsoft can each afford to put one hundred programmers,
and Google can afford to put a thousand programmers on the job.
As I understand it, The Browser Company is hoping to provide the easiest possible onramp in an attempt to jumpstart mass adaption. They think that, with the mass customer base, even if they get sufficient buzz for people to try their product—Dia—they have at most thirty seconds of patience from those who download-and-install, so it has to be very, very familiar indeed.
Hence The Browser Company’s Very Klever Sekrit Plan:
Chrome—everyone is familiar with how Chrome works, you type something and it either does a Google search or goes to a URL…
Plus a ChatBot—most people will be familiar with ChatBots, and will find putting the three options (URL, Google search, or ChatBot Q&A) on an equal footing convenient…
?????? (with apologies to the Underpants Gnomes of South Park)…
Mass adoption and a sustainable business…
So David Pierce is wrong. “Chrome with a ChatBot” is just the plan for the supereasy onramp. And then, once you are on the highway, you will then be painlessly guided to the valuable edges in managing your infolife that Dia will offer you. While, meanwhile, Jonny Ive will be designing something beautiful but irrelevant, and the Big Boys will be mired in their bureaucratic red tape.
Talking his book, The Browser Company head honcho Josh Miller went on the WaveForm <https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/waveform-the-mkbhd-podcast> podcast to explain what belongs inside the “3. ??????” item in the very clever plan:
As best as I can suss it out from the episode—which is, so far, the most thorough guide I can find to the Sekrit Plan—the hope is to:
Radical Familiarity as Onramp: Start with a very familiar interface, nearly indistinguishable from the Chrome browser, in the left pane of each tab in the Dia window. Thus new users feel instantly at home. The goal is to minimize friction and cognitive load for first-time users, making the switch as painless as possible.
Keep it very familiar by having a normal ChatBot in the right pane of each tab in the Dia window.
Integrated Chatbot as a Core Feature: Place chatbot functionality on equal footing with traditional browser actions (URL entry, search), so users can seamlessly ask questions, summarize, or interact with web content in natural language—without feeling like they’re using a bolt-on tool.
And the ChatBot will not just do all the normal ChatBot things, but be automatically focused on the webpage to its left, plus other webpages in other tabs if you call them out as relevant as well.
Leverage Browsing Data for Personalization: Use the browser’s privileged position to integrate AI with users’ browsing data, enabling smarter, context-aware assistance that can anticipate needs, automate tasks, and surface relevant information at the right moment.
Move Beyond Web Pages to “Infolife” Management: Envision the browser not just as a window to the web, but as a platform for managing the user’s entire digital life—organizing, retrieving, and synthesizing information across tabs, documents, and services.
Continuous, Painless Guidance to “Valuable Edges”: Once users are in the door, gradually introduce them to advanced features that help them manage complexity, save time, and extract more value from their online activity—without overwhelming them up front.
Monetization via Value-Added Services: The long-term plan is to convert users into paying customers by offering premium features—likely centered on productivity, organization, and AI-powered workflows—that go well beyond what a free browser or chatbot can provide.
Differentiation from Big Tech Bureaucracy: Position Dia as nimble and user-focused, in contrast to the slow, bureaucratic innovation cycles of giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. The pitch is that a smaller, more focused team can deliver features that actually matter to users, faster.
Iterative Experimentation (“??????” Step): Embrace a philosophy of rapid iteration and experimentation, recognizing that the “killer feature” may not be obvious at the outset. The company is betting that, by getting users in the door and learning from their behavior, it can discover and build the features that will justify a paid subscription.
Now this may be mostly B-School blather—they may just want to have fun, and need a plan that will induce some VCs to give them money while they have fun building software.
Nevertheless, it seems to me as if The Browser Company honcho Josh Miller shares a brain with the VergeCast’s Nilay Patel and David Pierce. Only what they fear as chaos, he sees as a ladder to have a lot of fun, and maybe, maybe make a lot of money and have an influence—but, more probably, get his team hired and placed into Golden Handcuffs the moment any one of the Big Boys concludes The Browser Company’s Dia might someday gain some traction.
I couldn't really grok Arc. I've switched to Orion, mainly because I like Kagi's search engine, and want to support them.
I also couldn't grok this discussion at all. I'm mainly interested in supporting the Web against apps, mainly for privacy reasons. For the moment, my limited use of AI has transformed my experience of the Web.
There is certainly a lot of industry groupthink about the future of the web and how we will use it. Browsers that are infused with AI chatbots. Perhaps AI decoupled from screens (despite 2 major failures)? AMZN is pushing "reorders" more insistently, both through the browser and its distributed Echo devices. It is also using AI in its fulfillment centers, and I read today that it is testing humanoid robots to increase deliveries from its Rivian vans.
I cannot believe that people will accept AIs as the next, more advanced algorithmic approach to choose what you see and how you interact in the world. This is very much a P K Dick dystopia. AI needs to be unobtrusive and a help when asked. Unfortunately, it seems that it will gravitate to being used for ever more intrusive surveillance in both the workplace and in public. [OTOH, AIs may be a good way to speak truth to power without exposing yourself.]