Best Web Browser 2025? Arc vs Chrome vs Safari vs Brave

0:00 - Intro

‍0:15 - Browser Wars

‍2:19 - Arc Browser

‍3:06 - Arc Features

‍5:38 - Chrome Stagnation

‍7:00 - Safari

‍8:41 - Switching from Safari to Arc

‍9:52 - Brave

‍11:11 - Vivaldi & Firefox

‍11:43 - How most browsers make money

‍12:28 - Best Browser Verdict

Alex Bass: If you're watching this video you're probably considering switching your browser which props to you that's a very difficult thing to do but if you're open to actually doing that let's go through the different browsers that are available and see what actually fits your needs.
The most annoying thing with browsers in recent times is just stagnation like a decade back I feel like the space was so much more interesting you had Internet Explorer and like everyone like hated it but everyone used it and then like web developers hated it and then you had companies like Firefox coming out and they're like we're going to redefine this and make this fun again and then they started getting market share and then you just had like Google being like wait the internet is like our space we are search like we need to own this portal to get to it and that's where they came out with Chrome so the super smart thing that Google did here is they built an open source version of the browser called Chromium most of the browsers that you're even considering today are actually built on Chromium so it's the same exact foundation and Google really is kind of at the core of that within the past couple years we've been seeing a lot more Innovation popping up in the space kind of being labeled as the productivity browser you've probably heard of some browsers like shift and sidekick browser and even Chrome extensions like Workona and Toby like they're rethinking the tab management space or like how do we make some of your productivity apps or your tools that you use in the daily basis right there accessible at all times this is great in theory and hey we used shift for about a year so I think the general concept that these tools are trying to do are so great like let's make the browser better but I don't think that the browser is made better necessarily by just a Chrome extension which is going to be limiting in so many facets there's only so much that you can do to break that gap between Chrome extension and actual interface that you're working within this is also the time where we started seeing tools like Brave pop up and Vivaldi and heck even Microsoft rebranding to Edge and being like let's get back our Internet Explorer market share and introduce features in like open Ai and and GPT deep into the browser they're trying to get the market chair away from Google that they've taken the problem is to have a good browser you needed to work cross-platform you end up using the same languages that many of these other browsers are using to have them be cross-platform it almost stifles levels of innovation of just being able to build and iterate quickly and that's where Arc has come out and totally changed the landscape in that they are out of the gate built a top of chromium but they're using Swift to build things out so interactions and everything is just beautiful the thing is it only works on Mac OS and that is this risk in a way that all these other browsers just wouldn't do out of the gate they're like we need to be fully cross platform or we're dead there's no way we're going to compete with Chrome and Safari if we can't do cross platform and that's where Arc was like well hold on what if we actually didn't care as much about cross platform out of the gate and we saw if we could actually innovate on this browser space that's been so stagnant and that's exactly what they've done by having a fresh foundation and a very specific customer base that they were focusing on Mac OS users that's enabled them to innovate and iterate so quickly in the space which is actually the thing that is making them wildly successful if you're currently using a tool like Chrome you're probably used to using profiles which is like this hidden area that allows you to jump between say your work and personal well Arc has this baked in at such a deep level that it is literally a swipe to the right and you're in a totally different space or swipe to the left totally different space or what if you're in slack or telegram or some chat messaging tool and you click on a link it will pop up in the little Arc and you get to choose what environment you want to jump in they have actually built these different profiles at such a deep level in the way that you're using it on a day-to-day basis with Arc Tabs are bookmarks and bookmarks are tabs you're actually using the folder structure to access the pages that you're trying to use on a day-to-day basis you're not just going through the folder structure to try to find a bookmark to then click it to be open in a new tab with Arc you actually benefit with organizing your bookmarks while it might sound weird at first it is something that is impossible to move away from once you start using and the truth of the matter is Arc is just fun to use they let you choose all these different color themes and pin things and it actually feels like you're using an operating system a top of what you're using play a YouTube video and then you leave the tab and then it pops out into a pop-up video that just works across your screen these little tiny interactions that they Implement at a deep level in just the day-to-day usage is really what makes it different it is really the day-to-day experiences that you have when you're using it for example have you ever been on a website and you're trying to be focused in some of the work that you're doing but then you click on a link and it brings you to a different website in a new tab and then all of a sudden you go down this rabbit hole and then you're on YouTube you don't even know what you're looking at anymore with Arc they introduce such a simple feature called Peak where if you're on a website and you click an external link it does a popup kind of interface where it's still a layer at top of the tab that you were in it's so clear where you were left off and you don't get as distracted cuz you're like oh cool I'm not going to leave this and go back to what I was doing if you want to make it full screen you can go and do that but it's really an option that you need to make the decision to do versus it making that decision for you which is most of the other browsers on the market right now so when it comes to actual productivity in your browser it's more about those little interactions and what they're doing to help you be more productive and be aware when you're about to go down a Time sync it's not just about having your favorite apps pinned on the left hand side that are quickly accessible that doesn't make productivity but that's the approach that tools like Sidekick browser and shift are going in that's not really productivity though it's in the micro interactions and Arc has thought through them so deeply okay let's switch to Chrome you're likely using Chrome right now as they own 60 plus% of the browser market share love or hate Chrome you have to appreciate it without Chrome chromium wouldn't exist and then your favorite browser also probably wouldn't exist Chrome innovated a lot early on but then as the Deep ties to Google existed with search they really couldn't build the level of productivity into it because that actually hurts their ad revenue business for actually searching Google there's this very weird alignment that also causes inertia to happen where people are just used to doing what they're doing they're used to opening up that new tab and searching Google to literally find what they already had bookmarked the week prior and Google likes that because now you're more ad revenue for Google on the plus side Chrome just works businesses use it they have billions of users the biggest problem that comes with that though is they can't make major changes imagine making a change that affects billions of daily active users you're going to upset a lot of people and this is where the inertia comes in it play at such a deep level people don't want change and those are the people that are using Chrome and Chrome does what it needs to do and it does it well but it looks pretty much the same as it looked 6 years ago and it's going to look the same six years from now that's Chrome it's stable businesses can rely on it they're not going to have these major issues the main thing is they just need to work and it needs to be stable that's that's Chrome so let's switch gears to Safari the interesting thing about Safari is that Apple chose very specifically not to build it on chromium they wanted to go their own path using webkit because they kind of like Google wanted to own the foundation of the way that people access the internet Safari has focused a lot on trying to just be a performant browser that doesn't burn too much battery life and is just a really good companion to Mac OS and iPhone yeah so the big negatives here is it just doesn't work on other devices so you can't use it on Android you can't use it on Windows they really want you in their ecosystem to use it by focusing specifically on Mac OS they really have been able to tie that Hardware in with the software and that is a pretty big benefit with that though they are making these decisions to tie in Safari like deeply to your iCloud and of course Apple wants you paying for iCloud so they want you on their infrastructure and their system everyone's kind of vying for your information and for you to get locked into what they have so while they may be introducing pretty cool features like a baked in password manager that allows you to unlock and log in to pretty much any website with your fingerprint that's awesome but it's not Universal you literally have to always be using Apple Safari and Apple devices to be able to access this this is actually something that our video producer Cory who's editing this video right now could probably chime in better than me about cuz he just switched to Arc from Safari after using Safari religiously for years if anyone knows me I try to convince people to use ARC when I first start meeting them so that was no different with Cory and there were hours of debates going on every time we hung out hey I'm Cory and yeah like Alex mentioned we had hours of conversations about uh Arc and Safari my story is that I didn't have a pain-point or a problem to solve I'm happy withSafari it's more efficient on my computer CPU wise than Chrome cuz I used to use Chrome even though I didn't have a pain-point just find finding out that Alex literally bought a MacBook just to use Arc was like okay this guy's pretty serious about this browser so I had to give it a try andI couldn't deny the unique experience and also just how fun and like had its own like energetic nature to it that I just really enjoyed when I was using it but I actually went back to Safari after trying Ark for the first time because I missed my like passwords and like Apple pay and and things autofill all those things but there are solutions to to fix that so I tried Arc for a second time so I kind of went back and forth a little bit and after trying Arc a second time I haven't moved back since I've been pretty much fully on Arc now like I might have like 2% of things that I use Safari for still but like slowly and slowly that's getting to 100% fully using Ark now and I love it if you've heard of Brave you're probably a privacy focused individual someone that doesn't want Google to own all of your your information and is typically more geared toward the blockchain and crypto in general that was where they first started building out and they had a crypto token tied so you would actually get compensated by visiting websites and in a way it was like you should own your data and you should even be compensated for your data it was a really cool idea it's built on chromium so it's the same type of foundation as Arc and chrome but the main gist of it is its privacy focused so you don't have to give them an email you could essentially just use a seed phrase and that's what all your bookmarks and everything are backed up to and people that are super privacy-minded they really appreciate that but that's also not going to give you as good of an experience as having an actual account tied to what you're doing Brave has things like ad block baked in quite deeply at the foundation they also support chromium extensions like everything else that you're used to it's really impressive with what they've done but that's also going to bring with it many limitations as you actually start getting into Super Innovative features on top of that they've also taken a little bit of inspiration from Arc in the way that they recently rolled out a sidebar navigation I think all that really shows is Arc is on to something and their biggest competitors are taking inspiration okay now I just want to go through like Vivaldi and Firefox so Firefox for example that was like the leader in the space and there's so much coming out that was my main browser for many years before even switching to Chrome and they were innovating a lot back then but now it all just kind of feels much the same even Vivaldi they started moving more into the personalization and you can do color themes and really get kind of fun with that and they had the sidebar tab navigation as well but I think they've all kind of struggled to really be anything super special the craziest part to all of this is most of these browsers business models are let's make our money by getting Google to pay us to make Google search our default search engine it's insane Arc is very clear about being a privacy focused browser but also super Innovative in many different ways it'll be interesting to see if their business model ends up going that similar type of path is Google can you pay us to be default Google search engine or maybe they can actually go a different path and focus more on B2B and collaboration there's so much more that can be explored in the space and I think that's where Arc is actually rethinking the game and taking some inspiration from these tools that have built amazing features for teams to use in collaboration but not really tied in at a browser foundational level Arc feels like the personal browser that is also the team and collaboration browser and there's something that's just really exciting about that so hope this helps you understand the browser landscape a little bit more if you want to go deeper dive on it I've written a pretty lengthy article that goes into the whole journey of the past decade of ultimately finding Ark and it's something that is so near and dear to my heart and also something that I was super skeptical of when I first heard about Arc I was like another productivity browser we don't need another one of those and then once I actually used it I was hooked so if you're skeptical I hear you I was too if this type of video is interesting to you give us a subscribe and thumbs up because we have some really interesting things in the works like a super exciting miniseries that's been in the works for three plus years now cool appreciate your time and attention and we'll catch you in the next one.