Arc Announces Arc Search, Releases iPhone App

The Browser Company, makers of the alternative web browser Arc, this morning announced Arc Search, an AI-powered search service that will take on Google Search. It’s available for now only as an iPhone app, but it will eventually be integrated into the Arc app across all platforms.

“Arc Search brings everything you are searching for, to you — quickly and without distractions,” the announcement post explains. “Arc Search gets you up to speed on everything with [fewer] taps and open tabs thanks to a whole flight of clever new features.”

Given how confusing the Arc web browser can be, I’m not surprised to discover that Arc Search is equally confusing. The company is promoting it as a standalone mobile app for now, similar to DuckDuckGo, I guess, but it has much bigger plans than anything mentioned in its announcement post. Starting, interestingly, with this little curiosity: Though the Browser Company doesn’t mention AI or any variant of that term in its announcement, this service is very much about AI.

Here’s what’s happening.

The Browser Company has been working on its Arc web browser for years, and it has slowly released clients across Mac and iPhone, while working on a version for Windows and, presumably, Android as well. Development is slow over at The Browser Company, in part because it uses the Swift programming language in a unique cross-platform way. But in the company’s defense, it has grand plans for creating a platform that vastly exceeds the capabilities of a typical web browser, and deeply integrated AI functionality has become a key part of that.

The Arc Search mobile app replaces the original Arc mobile app for iPhone, which was positioned as a companion app for the desktop (Mac) client. But the functionality we see here will be integrated directly into the Arc web browser, and we will eventually see a single app, called Arc, across all supported platforms. So this first Arc Search app is temporary, in a way.

Unlike the previous Arc companion app on iPhone, Arc Search is an actual mobile web browser. It asks to be made the default browser on iPhone, and its AI-based functionality only works when you do so. Basically, you ask it a question—like who is going to win the Super Bowl this year? and it uses AI to generate a “Browse for me” web page (a reply) that answers the question by reading websites and summarizing them. It provides supporting information in a bulleted list and a list of sources and other details below that, and under the covers, Arc Search uses technology from OpenAI and Anthropic to work its magic.

Beyond this functionality, Arc Search offers integrated ad, cookie, and tracker blocking. And while its unique question-based user interface is confusing at first, you can also simply type in a URL to visit a specific website, as you can with any web browser. From there, you can use its integrated reader mode and a few other common browser features like favorites/bookmarks (which doesn’t appear to work yet). As with the desktop client, Arc Search automatically archives tabs after 24 hours.

Arc Search comes ahead of another big change for the Arc web browser, the long-awaited Arc Anywhere sync system. Once that is implemented, The Browser Company will work to release a standalone Arc app across desktop and mobile as we see with other web browsers, with integrated sync and AI search/summary functionality. Based on what I know of this company, you can expect all that to take a few more years.

You can download Arc Search from the Apple App Store. Prepare to be confused.