Arc Browser is a Revelation on the Mac (Premium)

In 2001, Microsoft released Internet Explorer (IE) 6 alongside Windows XP, cementing its dominance of the web browser market, with usage peaking north of 90 percent worldwide less than two years later. And then Microsoft, inexplicably and without explanation, stopped updating IE.

Why it did so was a mystery at the time, and it remained so for years. Lacking other evidence, many attributed the sudden lack of focus to laziness: Having dominated web browsers as thoroughly as it had PC operating systems and office productivity suites, the theory went, Microsoft had simply stopped trying. There was no need to innovate in a market in which it was the only relevant player.

It’s a good story. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, Microsoft had directed the IE team to work on platform advancements for Longhorn, the planned successor to Windows XP, that would embrace and extend the web into more powerful native capabilities. This project was supposed to take a few years and culminate in even deeper integration between Windows and the browser. But Longhorn infamously sprawled out of control and was only released in diminished form several years later as Windows Vista.

Nevertheless, Microsoft’s neglect of IE was real. And by turning its Eye of Sauron elsewhere for so long, Microsoft gave a new generation of web browser competitors—most notably Mozilla Firefox at first, but then Google Chrome—the opening they needed. By 2010, IE’s share of the market had fallen below 50 percent, and then Chrome surpassed IE as the most-used web browser in 2012. It hasn’t looked back since, though the rise of Safari on Mac—no doubt inspired by Apple previously being forced to make IE the default on its own desktop platform—is also notable.

Like IE during the heady “browser wars” years of the late 1990s, Firefox, Chrome, and other modern web browsers achieved their respective levels of success via innovations that improved functionality and performance while taking advantage of the ever-growing sophistication of the underlying web platform. This makes sense at a high level: When products are new, innovation often comes quickly, and simple but limited products can evolve into more full-featured solutions that address more needs.

Flash forward to today, and browsers are more relevant and important than ever before. They are “super apps” that are used by more people, on more devices, than any other software. That’s been true on Windows for almost 20 years.

It is odd to me, then, that we don’t see more innovation in this space: Today’s mainstream web browsers—not just major players like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, but also less common solutions like Brave, DuckDuckGo, Opera, Vivaldi, and so on—are nearly identical from a functional standpoint, with the same basic user experience. The differences are minor, and moving between web browsers is seamless and drama-free.

On the surface, this situation do...