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Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

bigtechpr.substack.com

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Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#11

Post by VoidWhisperer »

> coding assistant: cursor, claude code, codex, etc. write some code, have an intern-level chatbot write some more code, realize you hate doing code review, ship shitty unreviewed intern code that never improves, get mad, stop using it, get fired from coinbase

I feel like poster might have a bit of a history with Coinbase.. I'm assuming this was something along the lines of 'We want you to use AI to be more productive(tm)', the poster didn't, and then Coinbase got rid of them because they were 'not getting work done fast enough'

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm on the side of the poster on this, being forced to use AI tooling when it isn't helpful is very annoying

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#12

Post by Esophagus4 »

kraag22 wrote: post #10
walterbell wrote: post #4

https://x.com/adamwathan/status/1963709979363258560 | https://nitter.poast.org/adamwathan/status/19637099793632585... > Are there any other open source apps we could fork and move the tabs to the side then sell for $610m?

I enjoy using the Arc browser, but after receiving an email from the company about being acquired - where they said “Arc and Arc Search will continue to exist; we’ll share a long-term plan soon”. To me, that sounds like they don’t have a plan and the browser will be shut down. I guess it’s time to start considering alternatives.

BrowserOS isn’t bad - it has agentic flows, and doesn’t have complete feature parity with Arc, but it’s decent.

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#13

Post by esseph »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #11

> coding assistant: cursor, claude code, codex, etc. write some code, have an intern-level chatbot write some more code, realize you hate doing code review, ship shitty unreviewed intern code that never improves, get mad, stop using it, get fired from coinbase I feel like poster might have a bit of a history with Coinbase.. I'm assuming this was something along the lines of 'We want you to use AI to be more productiv…

Not at all:

"News reports indicate that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong fired several engineers in August 2025 who refused to use AI tools [...] Armstrong has strongly pushed for the adoption of AI at the company, giving engineers a short deadline to start using AI coding assistants."

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#14

Post by meshugaas »

VoidWhisperer wrote: post #11

> coding assistant: cursor, claude code, codex, etc. write some code, have an intern-level chatbot write some more code, realize you hate doing code review, ship shitty unreviewed intern code that never improves, get mad, stop using it, get fired from coinbase I feel like poster might have a bit of a history with Coinbase.. I'm assuming this was something along the lines of 'We want you to use AI to be more productiv…

it’s a dig at this https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/22/coinbase-ceo-explains-why-...

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#16

Post by xnx »

fruitworks wrote: post #7

The browser company is probably the worst buisness idea I have come across in a long time. Who is going to pay for a closed-source reskinned chromium that only works on Apple products? The entire feature set could be replicated by a few plugins.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very lucrative business idea.

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#17

Post by joak »

kraag22 wrote: post #10
walterbell wrote: post #4

https://x.com/adamwathan/status/1963709979363258560 | https://nitter.poast.org/adamwathan/status/19637099793632585... > Are there any other open source apps we could fork and move the tabs to the side then sell for $610m?

I enjoy using the Arc browser, but after receiving an email from the company about being acquired - where they said “Arc and Arc Search will continue to exist; we’ll share a long-term plan soon”. To me, that sounds like they don’t have a plan and the browser will be shut down. I guess it’s time to start considering alternatives.

Zen browser is a Mozilla based clone of Arc browser...

It's a good/possible alternative

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#19

Post by tomhow »

abtinf wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

Please don't complain about tangential annoyances... They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Why Browser Company at $610M is cheap

#20

Post by pjjpo »

xnx wrote: post #16
fruitworks wrote: post #7

The browser company is probably the worst buisness idea I have come across in a long time. Who is going to pay for a closed-source reskinned chromium that only works on Apple products? The entire feature set could be replicated by a few plugins.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very lucrative business idea.

Yeah the article seems to not cover it, possibly to remain as negative as possible, but I guess it's only the investors that made out with mostly break even. The founders would still have plenty of stock to make a fortune on this - maybe they'll have trouble with getting investment in the future, but if even Adam can do it then anyone can.
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