So Long, and Thanks for All the Vertical Tabs

The Browser Company of New York has decided to sunset Arc on December 22, 2026. You may know Arc as a browser. You may also know it as the dictionary illustration for “generational fumble.”Arc is the reason I fell in love with vertical tabs, and as often happens in love stories, BCNY broke my heart when they moved on to AI and Dia. The number of vibe-coded browsers has increased tenfold since I posted what turned out to be my eulogy for Arc back in April, and it’s fascinating to see how closely everyone tries to recreate its features. Every day, there’s another “I made a browser” post on Reddit, and honestly, Reddit itself is getting hard to read these days because of all those vibe-coded posts.And I think there’s more to take away from this situation, not just about browsers, but about software in general. It’s harder to make a decision when the choices seem unlimited, and with the arrival of AI, that’s where we’ve ended up with software as well. It’s Barry Schwartz’s paradox of…