We switched from jir to linear, what a fresh starts !
Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
181–190 of 528 posts
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#182I lost all faith in The Browser Company when they went into a maintenance-only mode with Arc to shift to Dia, without any real announcement. Just a reply to a Twitter post calling them out. They figured no one would notice. I think they eventually addressed it after some public pressure, but I don’t think they sold the decision well. AI seems like a feature to add to existing browsers, not something that needs its ow…
I also hated that they were trying to make it a free tool, which would mean selling user data to make money, and would require growth at all costs. These days, I'm trying to migrate to paid tools. I would much rather work with a slower growing company that has a real business model other than grow and sell out.
> a real business model other than grow and sell out.
This is why I have problems trusting any new SaaS these days. The industry has changed from wanting to build a good product to wanting to grow fast and then exit, and typically the users get screwed.
You just can't trust that anything will stick around, so why bother adopting the tool in the first place, especially for anything that's not open source.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#183I lost all faith in The Browser Company when they went into a maintenance-only mode with Arc to shift to Dia, without any real announcement. Just a reply to a Twitter post calling them out. They figured no one would notice. I think they eventually addressed it after some public pressure, but I don’t think they sold the decision well. AI seems like a feature to add to existing browsers, not something that needs its ow…
I also hated that they were trying to make it a free tool, which would mean selling user data to make money, and would require growth at all costs. These days, I'm trying to migrate to paid tools. I would much rather work with a slower growing company that has a real business model other than grow and sell out.
Same. Old business models make more sense to me and seem healthier for customers, employees, and the economy. Growth at all costs, with the goal of a quick and profitable exit only benefits the founders, and is generally a net loss for society as a whole.
I can’t say I’d be above taking the briefcase full of money when dangled in front of my face, but when that’s the goal from the outset, the incentive structure feels backward.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#184Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#185$610m for a Chromium skin with generic AI bolted on feels like a lot. But what do I know?
They did well to get acquired before the AI bubble pops.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Secure browsers want interoperability and for there to be zero objections on those grounds. Companies want to offer a standard web browser, but they need to harden deployments for specific threats. You can see articles like https://aka.ms/EdgeSecurityWhitepaper/Docs for Edge which describe the extra layers of security you can apply while still using the same browser. Atlassian would want integration with their backen…
> Companies want to offer a standard web browser, I don't believe that in a long term. If atlassian creates an enterprise-managed browser they can charge for, there will be a big incentive to making their suite work better in that browser only. Or JIRA/Confluence features will be released using APIs only available there. It will be their EEE. If they really cared about actual security, they'd optimise their services…
> there will be a big incentive to making their suite work better in that browser only. Or JIRA/Confluence features will be released using APIs only available there. It will be their EEE.
That just sounds like going back to making thick clients/desktop apps vs. web with extra steps. They might as well make their own native Jira app instead of making an entire web browser and breaking their web app to only work in their new browser.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#187lol Hug Firefox close, it's an awful world out there, especially with Google being given the greelight to continue their monopolising with Chrome. I remember being tempted by this thing when it first came out - their asinine sign up waiting list kept me from pursuing it further and then I forgot about it until they eventually fully dumped it and moved into full AI-enshittification territory. There are really 30 years…
Am I the only one having isses with Firefox on Linux? While playing videos the image sometimes freeze and the audio keeps playing. Ironically the best media-player so far has been Edge, even chrome have some issues. All installed from Fedora discovery store, so prob related to Flatpak packaging.
I personally don't have that issue with Netflix and Youtube on Firefox in kde-neon.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#188Any guesses as to what this means for Arc?
I absolutely love Arc for Mac. It gets all the little things right -- at least for my workflow and mindset. But "getting all the little things right" in a browser isn't something you can monetize.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#189I 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…
Agreed, OpenAI and Anthropic want to get as close to the user as possible. Browser is used more often than a specific website or standalone desktop app and much less work than an entire OS. Raycast also seems well positioned but perhaps more niche. Perhaps Atlassian was sitting on cash and needed to make some bets. If you can build a big enough user base for a browser it can earn handsomely from AdWords type referral…
"Perhaps Atlassian was sitting on cash and needed to make some bets
Perhaps investors should put on a stupidity discount and discount the value of cash when valuing the value of equity!
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#190The strategic insight behind Arc was perfect – your browser IS the Operating System, and so we should build a browser that can function as that platform. Arc had pretty good market validation with early adopters, they say that growth was flattened out but IMO that's normal for most products, and it's up to the company to find out WHY growth flattened and then solve that problem. Not kill the product and chase some en…
100% on point, classic case of drinking ai cool aid and killing what users wanted
The thing is they make the correct diagnoses of Arc's issues [1], but then instead of addressing them and doing the hard work of building a great product, they took the easy way out and started another greenfield project. How often has that ever been a good decision?
1 - https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...