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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

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191–200 of 528 posts

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#191

Honestly I think Dia and any other AI first browsers are a bad idea.You lose out on the exploratory nature of the web. How are you going to stumble upon a random nugget during a web search session that you never would have found otherwise. This kind of thing happens to be frequently when I don't go to AI to figure something out. I find a new product or new library for the language I am currently working with that may…

Yeah I question how many people are actually true innovators and researchers.

Much of my ideas are the results of deep thought but those really great ideas are sporadic at times!

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#193

What was the Browser Company even doing? First they had a successful consumer product with Arc as a Chrome clone, then they decided to shut it down for...a whole new browser called Dia that essentially acted as a browser extension that so many vibe coded clones were made of? What was even the point of all this roundabout engineering and the time and manpower to do so? What a waste. This seems more like an acquihire t…

There was an interview with the founders not long ago on Every's podcast: https://every.to/podcast/inside-the-browser-company-why-they... I never really got where the innovation was in Arc, and never got a chance to see or try Dia, but the interview at least gave me some empathy for what they were going for.

From my perspective, as a user, the big thing is compartmentalization.

Arc breaks the traditional paradigm of "bookmarks", using "Spaces" and "Pins" instead.

"Pins" are the closest to bookmarks. They appear at the top of the sidebar, and can be organized into folders. They differ from bookmarks in that they are pretty much native tabs that are unloaded until you open them.

"Spaces" are sets of tabs, both pinned and normal. You can associate a space with a specific profile, and each profile has separate cookies and such - but you don't have to.

From a usage perspective, pinned tabs instead of bookmarks mean that I can press Cmd+t and enter a URL, a search query, or the name of a pinned tab. It's smart enough to choose the correct one which means I don't have to think about it. That's handy, and was unique when I adopted it, but I'm sure it's either been implemented in other browsers or can be easily enough.

Spaces are _very_ handy, though. Right now, I have eight spaces. One "default" that I use normally, five for various projects I'm actively working on, one for a long-running project that requires me to log into a different Zoom account (so that one has its own profile, to prevent my accidentally being logged into the wrong Zoom account when joining a meeting), and one for personal stuff.

I have it on my list to look for an alternative and migrate, but it's still working for my needs. I'm going to miss it, though.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#194

It was nice knowing them. > less than 10% of organizations have adopted a secure browser Yes Gartner, let's invent a "secure enterprise browser", because there's too much interoperability on the web - there's definitely some business on splitting that up. I'm sure atlassian people love that idea.

> less than 10% of organizations have adopted a secure browser That's the value prop (along with better application interop+) of the Here browser. + I do think the File System API did somewhat mitigate this value prop. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...

I haven't heard of Here browser until now, but lookin at the website I guess I don't understand what the point is?

For Windows shops, Edge is already an "enterprise browser." I can control literally every aspect of it via MDM policies or Group Policy for the on-prem AD folks. If using EntraID, SSO is already included, and you can go as far as whitelisting sites as well. I can set custom tab groups, pinned tabs, etc all with policy.

Even on non-managed/BYOD devices, once signed in to the work account Edge can be managed the same way via MAM policies. I can even force documents and links from other "work" apps to open in the managed Edge profile.

The only thing Here seems to offer that I couldn't configure Edge to do is the split-pane view in their "Supertabs" but Edge does have the sidebar, that I can configure to be pinned with Teams, Outlook, Copilot, etc.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#195

What was the Browser Company even doing? First they had a successful consumer product with Arc as a Chrome clone, then they decided to shut it down for...a whole new browser called Dia that essentially acted as a browser extension that so many vibe coded clones were made of? What was even the point of all this roundabout engineering and the time and manpower to do so? What a waste. This seems more like an acquihire t…

There was an interview with the founders not long ago on Every's podcast: https://every.to/podcast/inside-the-browser-company-why-they... I never really got where the innovation was in Arc, and never got a chance to see or try Dia, but the interview at least gave me some empathy for what they were going for.

> I never really got where the innovation was in Arc

I worked with a PM that absolutely loved it and insisted on using it. When he showed me it, all I could think of was "this is what my Firefox looked like before they killed XUL extensions".

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#196
post #188

Any 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.

What it means, I suspect, is that you should look into the Zen browser for Mac (and Windows and Linux, to boot), which is very clearly heavily Arc-inspired but not aiming for VC Unicorn status.

https://zen-browser.app/

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#197
post #138

lol 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 have no such issues (Debian), but I also don't use the flatpak.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#198
I'd like to be proven wrong but I'm feeling the same point Carmack was making about not building "VR" operating systems[1][2] applies to "AI" browsers as well. It seems like a futile effort especially considering revenue generation and it seems pointless to not pick Chromium for that even if you're hellbent on going down that road.

[1]: https://xcancel.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1961172409920491849 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45066395

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#199

The 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…

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