The Arc browser: Why add another browser?

When you subscribe to various productivity lists, you start seeing some of the same applications pop up over and over. For example, quite a few productivity sites are into personal knowledge management apps such as Obsidian and Craft. I still don’t see how those apps will help me do my work, so I haven’t given them much thought.

However, The Browser Company (hmm, what a name) has developed their own take on the web browser with Arc. Through October 22, 2022, anyone in academia can “jump the line” and get their free copy. So why another browser, and how is it better than Chrome, Firefox, etc.?

I have a confession to make before I answer that question, and perhaps it testifies to my nerdiness. As I mention on the tools page, I have a variety of browsers on my devices. Firefox (and Firefox Focus), Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari (and Safari Tech Preview), Vivaldi, Brave and Duck Duck Go’s browser are on at least one of my devices. So why do I have so many? I actually use several different browsers each day, because I find that it simplifies my different use cases. Let me mention three reasons why.

When I’m doing library research, I may be using one of three different “library” systems: Georgia College’s library, Bethel’s library, ^[1]The real benefit of emeritus status! If you wonder what benefits an emeritus professor gets, it comes down to two things, one of which I’ll never take advantage of: I can participate in any … Continue reading and Taylor and Francis’ system.

Both the National Communication Association and the regional communication associations use Taylor and Francis for publishing their journals and keeping all the journal archives. But because I am a patron member of Southern Communication Association, and a member of the National Communication Association, I get different access privileges than the access I get through Bethel or Georgia College.^[2] The biggest reason is to get articles without an embargo. Without the memberships, I have to wait 12-15 months before I get access to certain articles. Boo!

It so happens that the consortium Bethel is part of has certain databases that the University of Georgia system doesn’t. Interestingly enough, I haven’t yet found databases that USG has that Bethel doesn’t. But perhaps I haven’t tried that hard.

Confused yet? I thought so. 🙂 So what does this all have to do with Arc? I don’t know if it will allow me to be logged into three different libraries without each one being confused as to which one I’m using at that time. What I’d like is a “space” for each library, and that’s one of the big selling points of Arc.

In my heart of hearts, I also want to separate Facebook browsing from all other browsing. It’s bad enough Facebook knows all, but the less I can contribute to their data set, the better off I am. And for a variety of work and other reasons, I can’t quite quit Facebook just yet. Facebook normally gets its own browser, but sometimes I do other surfing in that browser, and that’s when things get a bit crazy… Will Arc solve that problem?

My final reason for multiple browsers is webmastering. One site I work with is in Google Sites (not my choice), and the omnipresent Google cookies get confused sometimes. One of my browsers on the iPad and one on my laptop still have the Bethel single sign on attached, and I’ve been gone more than a year. I can’t seem to get rid of it, and I really should delete profiles, etc. But sometimes I still have need to login to Bethel’s site, and the cookies just get recreated again…. So I use one browser to handle Google Sites, and a different browser to handle other web stuff.

Arc uses the Chrome engine, but with a different paradigm of web surfing. The Sweet Setup’s review of Arc is pretty comprehensive. Start there and come back here. 🙂 Since this post is pretty long already, I’ll explain my experiences with Arc in future posts.