Hello all.
As soon as I first saw Chat GPT connect to the web, visit websites, and return an answer to my question, I knew that the role of the website was about to change forever. Then, a week ago, the Browser Company, which produces the browser Arc, released a keynote presentation outlining their plans for the future. This has left me in little doubt that websites as we know them today will become a thing of the past.
Yes, I know that sounds melodramatic, but let’s be honest, the experience of visiting most websites sucks.
The Experience of Using the Web Today Sucks
You search Google for a topic, wade through the sponsored listings, and then click through a series of websites, each with a different interface you need to adapt to. Then, the ads, social share icons, cookie notifications, and SEO content clutter each site.
That experience is ripe for disruption, and we are beginning to see it happen.
AI Means We Don’t Need to Search and Surf
We can already cut through all that noise by asking Bing Chat or Chat GPT to surf for us and return the information we need. There is no need to manually search and click through half a dozen websites to find what you want.
However, what if that was baked into the browser? That is what the Browser Company is seeking to do. Enter your search query, and it reads several websites. It then returns the information you requested in a clean format that is easy to scan, even with supporting images.
They have already launched Arc Search on mobile, which does precisely this, and their desktop app appears not far behind.
Significant Barriers to Adoption
Of course, they have their work cut out for them. Google will not like this, as it threatens their ad revenue, and website owners will dislike the idea as it won’t expose users to their calls to action.
However, what will protect us as a sector the most will be adoption. Many people don’t even know what a browser is, let alone how to swap it out for one as niche as Arc. Only a relatively small number of people use Chat GPT instead of searching and visiting websites. For most people, that loop of searching and clicking through the results is too engrained to change quickly.
But in my experience, what makes life easier for the customer generally prevails. It may not be the Browser Company who succeeds in getting this to work, but somebody will.
How This Will Impact Us
This has enormous ramifications for those of us who work on websites. At first glance, you may be tempted to think that websites will exist purely for an AI to spider for information and that users will stop visiting them entirely. However, I doubt it will be that apocalyptic.
We all know AI hallucinates; even if it doesn’t in the future, the information it will return will be limited. Users will still need to click through to gather more details. Also, the impact on web apps will be more negligible in the short term.
That said, we will see reduced traffic going to our informational websites. This trend has already begun for some since Google has started servicing snippets in its search results. We can only expect this to grow as the adoption of AI-driven search increases.
What You Need to Do
All of this is to say that change is coming, and I would encourage you to keep an eye on developments. It won’t happen immediately, so there is no need for organizations to go into crisis mode, but it will happen. For now, I recommend you take the 15 minutes needed to watch the keynote from the Browser Company because I believe it signals a turning point we need to pay attention to.
