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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

cnbc.com

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Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#81

Post by outlore »

from a glitzy reimagining of "how we use the internet" to joining the ranks of shitty Jira...what an ending!

it's hard not to be bitter after they squandered so much goodwill by abandoning Arc

my personal thesis for consumer apps is that power users will always sustain over the latest hype cycle (even if that means your addressable market will be smaller - maybe don't take an obscene amount of VC money?)

The best thing to come out of Arc was the lovely design, the tab switcher, Nate's experiments on Twitter, the astounding welcome screen, Little Arc, the announcements which acknowledged the individual engineers etc. To me, those really pushed the boundaries. For that, thank you!

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#82

Post by prmoustache »

hbn wrote: post #46

I've been trying to find a Chrome replacement since they finally cut the cord on manifest v2. I know Firefox is the "right" option, and I'm fully in favour of chipping away at Chromium marketshare (even if the EU is determined to solidify it further with demands of Apple to allow non-Safari rendering in iOS) but I've used it in the past, and even if it's fine 99% of the time, there is that occasional website that has…

What about ignoring that 0.1% of the websites that are so badly made they don't work on firefox? Do they really deserve your attention?

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#83

Post by k9294 »

Shank wrote: post #25

I would've actually expected a buyer like OpenAI or Anthropic, if I'm being perfectly honest. Atlassian is such a strange buyer. $610m in cash is really low in the grand scheme of AI pricing too. If they're only worth $610m, I feel like this says a lot that "AI browsers" aren't actually worth that much. Remember, Instagram was $1b. The Windsurf acquihire was $2.4b and there are surely a lot more people in business th…

It looks really overpriced to me. Dia is a rough MVP. Arc is really a very niche browser with little adoption. I dont think technology worth this money, and Arc the user base is low compared to major browsers, probably around 1-5 million users with no growth (most likely they hit the plateau even before they decide to kill the Arc in favor of Dia).

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#84

Post by hbn »

4ggr0 wrote: post #51
hbn wrote: post #46

I've been trying to find a Chrome replacement since they finally cut the cord on manifest v2. I know Firefox is the "right" option, and I'm fully in favour of chipping away at Chromium marketshare (even if the EU is determined to solidify it further with demands of Apple to allow non-Safari rendering in iOS) but I've used it in the past, and even if it's fine 99% of the time, there is that occasional website that has…

> Edge is off the table since Microsoft said they'd only support it as long as Google did could've shortened this to 'Edge is off the table since its Microsoft' :)

I figure if anyone should be able to financially support putting out a decent, well-tested browser it should be the second most valuable company on the planet. But indeed, like nearly everything else Microsoft makes, it's trash.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#86

Post by whalesalad »

sniffers wrote: post #60

Building Dia was such a colossal mistake, and the folks running TBCNY seem to not understand. They believe they are reinventing the wheel, and every time I hear them talk I cringe.

Selling for over half a billion dollars sounds like zero mistakes were made.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#87

Post by eqvinox »

ecshafer wrote: post #47

This is not Dia the open source diagram editor. Apparently Dia is an AI chatbot that interacts with tabs.

I was concerned about the diagram editor for about a minute. Now (especially after scrolling through comments here) I'm annoyed at wasting my attention on this junk.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#88

Post by frankdenbow »

joeguilmette wrote: post #38
dcchambers wrote: post #18

The thing the Browser Company does best is marketing. I have always felt like they really wanted to market their products more than build them. The founders should let Dia/Arc go and just go into product marketing. Many would hire them.

I always wondered who did their marketing. Their Arc Act II video was so good I watched it a few times ( https://youtu.be/WIeJF3kL5ng?si=R1fHA87355dXDuZH ). I immediately thought Sandwich made it. Some of their stuff like https://youtu.be/5GeR8XTWR3M?si=RX-NBCMicnUPw1jA is so good I just periodically watch it. If The Browser Company folks made that video, their superpower is really marketing and you are actually corr…

Nashilu Makoua did a lot of their storytelling and strategy, very talented.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#89

Post by hbn »

phyzome wrote: post #52
hbn wrote: post #46

I've been trying to find a Chrome replacement since they finally cut the cord on manifest v2. I know Firefox is the "right" option, and I'm fully in favour of chipping away at Chromium marketshare (even if the EU is determined to solidify it further with demands of Apple to allow non-Safari rendering in iOS) but I've used it in the past, and even if it's fine 99% of the time, there is that occasional website that has…

If you think Firefox is the right choice, and it works 99% of the time, and you're worried about lack of competition... you should probably be using Firefox. That will support its marketshare (by definition). If you see bugs, you can probably assume they're just regular ol' bugs most of the time. A lot of the web is just plain broken or badly designed.

I'm giving it a shot on my work machine. Device management doesn't give me any options other than Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari anyway. I do like and use Safari for non-work tasks (mainly HN scrolling) but it has some issues that prevent it from being a main browser for me.

So I'll see if I can make FF work but it's mostly cause it's the best option at this point.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#90

Post by flkiwi »

julianozen wrote: post #77

Lots of respect to Josh Miller, the CEO. TBC got to a difficult place. They built a product that was very very good, but evidently not good enough to support the capital they raised or the workforce they hired. I wish they had managed to keep Arc around. It's a product I'd glad pay for, and it seems like maybe there are enough fans that subscriptions could've supported a smaller team. Hopefully Atlassian doesn't kill…

I know it's not fashionable to blame founders, but I genuinely don't understand this. What has he done to deserve "lots of respect" in the context of this conversation? TBC got to a difficult place because of their choices. Rugpulling users by creating a product nobody asked for, squandering investor money, cashing out by selling to a company antithetical to all the marketing copy TBC had produced to that point.

If you live by the rule that you only judge leaders by their actions and not by their words, TBC was a failure as soon as they abandoned Arc, and arguably when they couldn't provide a business case for Arc in the first place.

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