u/_diegoalo

I’m sure all of you saw the post with the new Dia price plans yesterday, it seems like the page is still being inactive for now, but oh boy they’re coming

My question now, after seeing this, is how on Earth they’re going to justify spending $100 on a browser with AI capabilities when their whole product idea to ditch Arc was precisely doing an AI browser, lighter and focused on using AI on the side to help the user perform tasks. Now their whole product differentiator is locked behind an absurd paywall (no one is going to spend $100 in Dia, and if they’re eager to do it, they’ll just pay Claude).

One can think that AI is expensive, and must be paid somehow, and I agree to a point, but here’s why I think this decision today makes zero sense:

Dia is just a Claude skin on a browser

Dia has no AI proprietary models, up to this day, and this is ridiculous. You’re telling me that your whole reason to exist, a browser using AI functionalities, is still relying on external AI providers?????

How on Earth have you not already invested all the funding you received in developing your own models??? Maybe having your own AI, tailored to the browser and not cloud dependent, done on device, would help you reduce costs and make a difference with, for example, the day Anthropic would release their own browser and have the same experience, but only you don’t have to pay extra to have it. They had such a long time to do so, and many months repeating that “new functionalities every week”, but the harsh truth is that they have released “Spaces” after more than a year.

A browser is not a product you would pay this money for

Let’s be clear here, a browser is not a good starting point for a paid product idea. There are a lot, they are free, and more are coming (also open source). Dia’s whole rationale is based on good UX, polished UI, and AI. Now you’re stripping your core value, and you’ve got only good aesthetics and smoothness.

Is that good? Sure

Is it enough to keep growing without product ideas around your AI main reason-to-exist? No

I’m not sure what’s the price a browser would be fair to pay to, if everything was great. I use Mimestream, a Gmail MacOS client, paying $59 a year. One can think that why are you paying so much for just an email client, use the default one.

But Mimestream is all about delivering an experience that cannot be matched by Google’s one Gmail webpage. That’s their value proposition, and you pay because you knew from the start what you’re going to get.

Día was free at the beginning, they didn’t know (or couldn’t) figure out how to develop their own in-house AI models to avoid relying too much on external AI providers, and now they expect us to pay this much for something that was indeed the reason why the product exists, and Arc is being discontinued.

I’m sorry, but no.

I’m sad to see this, I’ve been a Dia user from day one, but it seems that they’re really out of touch with the real world. I’ll stick with my Free version, and start looking for a better experience.

That’s just how the market goes.