Don’t worry, this isn’t spam!
Nor is it an ad.
And you don’t need to be concerned that all my blog posts are now going to get horrible clickbait titles.
But… it got you reading this, right? 😉
And I do genuinely want to highlight a new app I’ve been using this last week or so that has already replaced Safari on my iPhone as the browser I now search the internet with.
The app is called ‘Arc Search’. It’s made by a company called The Browser Company. (They already have a web browser on the Mac that’s making waves.) And I’m loving it.
So, what makes Arc Search so note-worthy?
The headline feature is something called ‘Browse for you’.
We’re all used to a process that goes something like this:
- We think of something we want to find out more about.
- We open up our web browser.
- We go to Google.
- We enter the words into the search box.
- We battle through endless ads to try and find which of the many, many links returned is most relevant.
- We click on a link to load a website.
- It doesn’t give us quite what we want.
- We go back and click on another website.
- That gives us more of what we’re after.
- We go back and click on another website.
You get the idea. We do a lot of work browsing. Good – amazing, really – as Google is, it still leaves a lot of the onus on us.
Enter Arc Search and ‘the browser that browses for you’.
When you open up Arc Search you are immediately presented with a big search box front and centre.
You can then start typing for what you’re looking for.
And, if you just hit Go, it’ll bring you search results from Google (or whatever search engine you ask Arc Search to use).
What’s the big deal, then?
Well, as well as the option to just do a standard search, there’s an additional button called ‘Browse for me’.
And, if you click on that button after entering your search term, Arc Search will go and browse the internet on your behalf and then – within seconds – build you a custom webpage providing you key information related to what your search term was.
Amazing!
It’s all done using artificial intelligence (AI). And no, it’s not perfect. But it is pretty great.
This feels like a huge step forward.
One other nice thing about this app? It blocks ads, trackers, and cookie banners. So you get a much nicer browsing experience too.
Clearly we are early days with AI, and who knows where all this leads, but this is one application of it that immediately feels useful. And, like with any technological process it’s not always purely good or evil. (There are ethical issues around what Arc Search does that Josh Miller, the CEO talks about a bit in this episode of The Vergecast.) But, at the user level, I’m enjoying this new app immensely.
Why not give it a go? Let me know how you get on!
–Sam
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PREVIOUS POST: Dead people goals