When the team at The Browser Company set out at the beginning of this year to build a mobile web browser, CEO Josh Miller made a rule: we are not allowed to build a default mobile browser. Building another Safari felt like a waste of time because, well, Safari exists. Because of the way Apple locks down browser development, pretty much every other browser on iOS is just another Safari. Besides, The Browser Company isn’t trying to build another web browser — it’s trying to build “the internet computer,” an operating system for the internet that changes the way we interact with apps and content online.
Instead of a browser, the team set out to do one thing and one thing only: bring users’ Arc sidebars to mobile phones. The sidebar is the...