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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

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Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#331

Post by buddhu »

jhaile wrote: post #299

I still use Arc as my primary browser. I prefer tabs on the side - I like how you can just drag tabs up and they will be saved (like Bookmarks, but I actually use it) I like pinned tabs which I use for calendar and my other top used "web apps" It also has good support for profiles and spaces. For example, I have a "Work" space, a "Demo" space (with tabs open for sales demos), a "Personal" space, and even a "Travel" s…

For what it's worth, and from what you've described (I haven't used Arc myself), most of those features are also available in Firefox with the Sidebery extension. Instead of "spaces" it has "tab panels", with a horizontal row of icons above your tabs that lets you switch to different panels of vertical tabs. You can pin tabs in a panel, you can setup URL patterns to automatically move tabs to the right panel, and it works with Firefox's multi-account containers so you can even have an URL automatically re-opened in a specific container associated with that panel.

[Side note: I'm hooked on Firefox's multi-account container feature because I can have different containers for general use, for work, isolated social media containers, etc, without needing an entirely different profile as in Chrome/Chromium and its variants. I've tried Vivaldi and other Chrome-based alternatives recently, but profiles are just too big of a separation by comparison, with separate extensions, bookmarks, settings, etc. I want all those things in one synced account where I can just open new tabs with their own set of signed-in accounts. Does Arc's profile feature have the same level of separation as Chrome? Am I missing something about how Chrome profiles work?]

And for anyone concerned about Firefox's recent statement about personal data, there's a great Firefox-based alternative called Waterfox that adds some nice features and has a much stronger emphasis on privacy.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#333

Post by pqtyw »

darth_avocado wrote: post #232
thor-rodrigues wrote: post #211

I’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.

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.

And there are business which will never be highly profitable unless the competition implodes for no particular reason (like making your own browser).

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#334

Post by jrflowers »

ar_lan wrote: post #265
colelyman wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? https://www.diabrowser.com/

When I saw that domain my first thought was it looks like they came up with the name by combining “diabetes” with “browser”

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#335

Post by pqtyw »

echelon wrote: post #245
darth_avocado wrote: post #232

Earlier 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 can't tell you how many designers I interviewed who told me they used the Arc browser. It was at least a dozen. I'd never heard of the damned thing before. I don't know why, but it appears to be popular with some creative demographics. The browser is an essential pane of glass to platformization and taxing the web. Anyone who wins a browser with significant market share has a huge opportunity to capitalize on. Not…

> how many designers I interviewed who told me they used the Arc browser

Looking at their frontpage the design is outright horrible if you have a > 7-8 inch screen. I guess in a way its good to have an example of what not to do.

> I'm sure they'd be killing it

Why, though? I mean the niche is pretty small, most people don't care much about open source or even what browser they are using at all.

Considering the overwhelming majority of Mozilla's funding is coming from Google and in no way could it survive without it being run by Google's plants is not that surprising.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#336

Post by zaruvi »

smallerize wrote: post #296
darth_avocado wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Arc for two reasons: Tabs on the side nav and the ability to have 3 different AWS accounts open at the same time

Firefox does both of those things out of the box with no extensions.

Yep, but admittedly the vertical tab UX is not the greatest. You either have them always be visible with an option to toggle by clicking the sidebar icon (no keyboard shortcut option afaik), or minimised as icons that expand on hover with an awfully annoying animation.

Looking at Zen, I really don't understand how Mozilla fail to capitalise on their browser, and build up a similar experimental project based on Firefox like it. It seems that many of these small QoL improvements could make a big difference. They have such a huge budget, and they waste it on inane things. Their fancy search deal with Google has made them complacent, and neglect one of the few things that ever had any real worth. Curious to see how it develops with the recent Google ruling. And to be fair, it does seem like Firefox development has picked up a bit lately—maybe even due to Zen's competition, who knows.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#337

Post by unregistereddev »

pezgrande wrote: post #163
avazhi wrote: 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.

No issues browsing or playing media on Mint XFCE, but I'm not using Flatpak.

On old hardware (~10 year old laptop with a Core i5-5200u and integrated graphics), I do have trouble with Google Video calls lagging. This seems to be caused by a combination of old hardware and certain Google products being overly optimized for Chrome.

My guess is that you don't have hardware acceleration enabled. That could be due to Flatpak packaging, or it could be due to running a less-than-optimal graphics driver. Granted it's been awhile since I've tried the open source graphics drivers and I hear they have improved, but I've had better success with closed source graphics drivers.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#338

Post by trhway »

rafram wrote: post #317
trhway wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

less than a $6M/head - it is a steal. Not even counting whatever IP they have.

How much do you think it costs to hire people?

you think Mark didn't know it when he hired that guy for $250 millions? Anyway, you probably mean an individual hiring cost. Which is a totally different case from hiring and building a multifunctional team of 100. Look around at aqui-hires to understand the price, especially when we're talking about people who has been working with AI products.

Re: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

#340

Post by warkdarrior »

praz4HN wrote: post #280
i1856511 wrote: post #258

Can somebody please tell me what is the business play behind The Browser Company. It has always seemed very suspicious to me, well-funded, not making money, and now this

Same as Edge & Chrome - primarily to funnel users to web pages, which in turn powers engagement/searches & ads. Once you have enough users on a browser, the business play is ad revenue.

How do Edge & Chrome collect ad revenue?
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