What Dia Says About the AI-Powered Future of Web Browsing (Premium)

My recent experiences with Perplexity Comet and Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode were both eye-opening, albeit in different ways. Where Comet is a full-on rethinking of what it means to be a web browser in the AI era, Copilot Mode is still incomplete and more evolutionary. But what about Dia, the new AI-powered web browser from The Browser Company, which previously--and briefly--set this world on fire with Arc. How does that compare?

Here's what I found out.
? Mac only
The Browser Company revealed its pivot to Dia in December 2024, but the first pre-release version of this browser didn't appear until this past June. As was the case with Arc, this first version is Mac-only, which dramatically limits its potential audience.

From a user experience perspective, Dia most closely resembles Perplexity Comet, in that it's a light overhaul of Chromium, as it should be it. But bigger changes are coming: The Browser Company heard loud and clear that the somewhat radical user interface it offers in Arc is too intimidating for mainstream users. But it does plan to bring some key Arc interfaces, including its workspaces/sidebar panes, to Dia in time.

For now, Dia presents a familiar face with light updates to the stock Chromium/Chrome experience. That's by design to ease the transition. And the result is even more minimalist than what we see with Comet. Which is also fine.

Still, a Windows version would make a big difference here.
?️ The Dia vision
If there's one issue on which The Browser Company and I align, it's in the belief that traditional browsers, as we know them today, will die. They'll be replaced by new apps, which for now we will still call browsers, that are AI-powered and interacted with using natural language. But the key to this vision is important enough that I'm writing about it separately: Webpages will still exist, but AI-powered browsers will interact with their content programmatically.

You can see this in a prototypical way in how Comet today can control webpages, like Google Maps in the example I used. And in how Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode (tried to, in my case) create a price tracker by manipulating multiple websites and services in real-time. But those use cases are akin to AI scraping sites for content. In the future, these interactions will be more sophisticated. Microsoft calls this functionality Actions, and Apple uses the term Intents. With Dia, The Browser Company calls this Skills.

(In case it's not obvious, this programmability won't be confined to webpages. Microsoft is adapting Windows 11 to be controlled by AI like this, and Apple and Google are doing similar work in their own platforms. Again, more on this soon.)
? Dia basics
Dia's Chromium base means it's easy to get up and running on the new browser. The interface is familiar, the extensions you rely on all work normally, and while The Browser Company tries to hide some Chromium UIs, like Settings, it's all available if you need it.

But...