Yesterday, in Claude is closer to the computer. ChatGPT has mostly been closer to the feed., I wrote:

And if the browser can learn skills, use sites, and help me do work that currently lives across separate apps, then the shape gets interesting very quickly.

That is why Dia still catches my eye.

The Browser Company had the right instinct about the agent-plus-browser shape before most people did. The idea of skills looks prescient in hindsight. Their UX still has taste. But I think they still treated the browser as the vehicle, not the substrate.

Arc bought them a strange kind of permission. They took a Chromium wrapper and made people care about it! I want to take a moment to commend them. That is not a small thing.

Choosing to discard Arc took away a lot of the trust they had earned. A company only gets so many chances to tell users, “follow us into the future, I swear this rupture is worth it.” They spent one of the big ones.

I also cannot help noticing where people ended up. The Browser Company lands at Atlassian. Some of the UX talent behind Arc lands at Anthropic. That split feels a little too on the nose. One path moves toward workflow software. The other moves toward the next fight over the answer machine.

Still, I want to give them credit. They called this earlier than almost anyone else. The product thesis was real. It truly is a bummer they gave away their right to be the ones who carry it forward.