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Can you please not do this here? We're trying for something a bit different:
Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
261–270 of 528 posts
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Selling for over half a billion dollars sounds like zero mistakes were made.
their valuation from last funding in March 2024 was $550m, sold for $610m minus cash on hand. so basically at value...agreed that it's a nice windfall for these folks but relatively bad outcome. When you're building a new browser with AI a year before the trillion dollar AI industry goes bananas for AI browsers and you end up with 600 mil, that feels like an L.
On the other hand, what is an AI browser supposed to enable that justifies a billion dollar valuation?
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#263I 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.
Assuming the business has access to the data, the backup plan for the business is always to sell the data. There is very little chance the leaders of a business simply wind down the business and close the doors.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#264It has been so tragic to see the unforced downfall of this company. Arc is such an amazing browser that really did some new and interesting things. They clearly have some phenomenal talent on the team, having managed to get their swift-centric development working on _Windows_. That's a huge and difficult undertaking! And they threw it away to work on (probably) the CEO's new fixation and threw Arc away like an old to…
> having managed to get their swift-centric development working on _Windows_. That's a huge and difficult undertaking!
im not a swift expert, but building your project for one of the officially supported targets shouldn't be considered a "phenomenal" achievent? lol
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#265I’m not sure whether I find it more worrisome or fascinating that we live in a world where a company that, as far as I know, has never generated a single dollar in revenue has managed to exist for over five years, employ more than 100 people, and still get acquired for this amount. This isn’t criticism or sarcasm — I’m genuinely impressed, but also very curious about the rationale behind it.
Agreed, to make it even more interesting Browser Company discontinued Arc earlier this year. So not only did they do all of the things OP listed, but also didn't have a current product when acquired.
They have "Dia" - which is Chrome + AI chat?
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-...
> How often has that ever been a good decision? It got them acquired, so certainly it worked for them this time. > doing the hard work of building a great product How often has that ever been a good decision?
You're assuming that Dia is what Atlassian wanted in this acquisition, and nothing else. We don't know what things would look like if they had continued developing Arc.
Almost every successful company has got there by grinding away on hard problems. No one launches a product and gets endless growth for free. Not to say that Arc would have definitely succeeded, but to date it's been a lot more successful than Dia.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was put on maintenance mode with minimal security updates to favour the development of their newer product Dia (AI browser).
Damn, I really appreciate the decision to do this in a new product. Arc is the best browser I've ever used, and I'd hate to see AI features forced upon me. Thanks Browser Company!
I agree. I think Arc was the biggest innovation in browser UI since Chrome.
I think you will eventually have to switch because it will lack behind given that it's not their priority anymore. Zen browser seems like viable alternative but I haven't used it enough yet to know how well polished it is.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some businesses that are simply not viable without losing money first. SpaceX cannot generate revenue until it first employs hundreds of people for a few years (maybe a decade) where they focus on building what will eventually bring revenue. Software has those problems too.
I mean this with no snark: I would love to see the investor deck that explains how an AI-powered browser is going to make any multiple of $610M.
Perhaps they are hoping Google will pay them ~$500m/yr to be the default search engine.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#269If the AI browser can use Jira for us, then this is a step forward for humanity.
Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Damn, I really appreciate the decision to do this in a new product. Arc is the best browser I've ever used, and I'd hate to see AI features forced upon me. Thanks Browser Company!
I agree. I think Arc was the biggest innovation in browser UI since Chrome. I think you will eventually have to switch because it will lack behind given that it's not their priority anymore. Zen browser seems like viable alternative but I haven't used it enough yet to know how well polished it is. https://zen-browser.app
This video seems informational, and goes over a lot of other new browser projects too.