Arc, a browser initially built just for the Mac, has been expanding lately. The Browser Company announced a beta of its Windows version last month, and today they're bringing the Arc experience to the iPhone with Arc Search. As the name implies, the new app is focused on searching -- when you open the app, you're met with a keyboard and search field, not your usual collection of tabs. And rather than just serving up simple search results from Google or your engine of choice, Arc scans the internet for various sources and creates a "page for me" that pulls together a bunch of info on your desired query. For example, I just searched for "What happened in the Detroit Lions game?" and was met with details about a controversial two-point conversion that was overturned and how it ultimately affected the game's outcome, which was a three-point Lions loss.

Brave joins the growing list of browsers that come with built-in generative AI assistants. The open source browser developer has started rolling out an update for Brave on desktop, which gives users access to its AI assistant Leo. Brave introduced Leo through its Nightly experimental channel back in August and has been testing it ever since. The assistant is based on the Llama 2 large language model, which Microsoft and Meta had developed together for commercial and research purposes. Like other AI assistants, users can ask Leo to do various tasks, such as creating summaries of web pages and videos, translating and/or rewriting pages and even generating new content.

The internet runs on advertising, and that includes search engines. Google brought in $26 billion of search revenue in the most recent quarter alone. As that business has grown, it's reshaped what search looks like. Year after year, ads have gobbled up more space on its results pages, pushing organic results further out of view. Which is why using Ghostery's new ad-free search engine and desktop browser, even in their pre-beta form, feels at once like a throwback to a simpler internet and a glimpse of a future where browsing that puts results ahead of revenue is once again possible.

As usual, senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi is onstage detailing the latest features that Apple will bring to macOS High Sierra when it launches. The first update is for Safari, with Federighi claiming that Safari tops all desktop browsers in speed: He even went as far as to say it's the world's fastest desktop browser. A Modern Javascript test claims the new Safari is 80 percent faster than Chrome. The browser also features autoplay blocking: It detects sites that shouldn't be playing video and pauses them. Safari also will deal with the various trackers that follow us around the internet with a feature called Intelligent Tracking Prevention. It uses machine learning to look for cross-site trackers and "segregates" them so that they can't keep tracking you.