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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

(www.cnbc.com)
520 points kevinyew | 27 comments | 04 Sep 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 1.524s | source | bottom
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thor-rodrigues ◴[04 Sep 25 16:27 UTC] No.45129033[source]▶
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.

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1. colelyman ◴[04 Sep 25 16:41 UTC] No.45129191[source]▶
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.
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2. emoII ◴[04 Sep 25 16:46 UTC] No.45129257[source]▶
Where can I read about this? It still gets regular updates and is front and center on the browser company website
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3. sphars ◴[04 Sep 25 16:49 UTC] No.45129292[source]▶
This was their blog post back in May

https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...

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4. hashbig ◴[04 Sep 25 16:49 UTC] No.45129300[source]▶
It was put on maintenance mode with minimal security updates to favour the development of their newer product Dia (AI browser).
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5. emoII ◴[04 Sep 25 16:57 UTC] No.45129400{3}[source]▶
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!
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6. jtbayly ◴[04 Sep 25 17:34 UTC] No.45129899{4}[source]▶
I mean, I guess that’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, they did abandon the product, so you’ll have to switch anyway in time.
7. ar_lan ◴[04 Sep 25 17:56 UTC] No.45130146[source]▶
They have "Dia" - which is Chrome + AI chat?

https://www.diabrowser.com/

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8. hashbig ◴[04 Sep 25 17:56 UTC] No.45130156{4}[source]▶
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

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9. Apocryphon ◴[04 Sep 25 17:59 UTC] No.45130203{5}[source]▶
This video seems informational, and goes over a lot of other new browser projects too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxhVA5NVQ4

10. dbbk ◴[04 Sep 25 18:04 UTC] No.45130245[source]▶
Chrome + AI chat is... Chrome + Gemini though
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11. ActionHank ◴[04 Sep 25 18:08 UTC] No.45130296{3}[source]▶
Shhh... don't tell Atlassian.
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12. jimmyshoes ◴[04 Sep 25 18:31 UTC] No.45130594{5}[source]▶
Yeah, this is the unfortunate part about products kept alive in maintenance mode in a rapidly evolving space.

I guess you could argue (as TBC did) it’s actually not rapidly evolving, and that gives it staying power. But eventually someone will reach parity and eventually eclipse the original product.

Hopefully Zen does that. I’m just tired of moving the same data to the effectively the same product run by a different team for no good reason.

13. swores ◴[04 Sep 25 18:33 UTC] No.45130637{3}[source]▶
Ironic that I wasn't familiar with this company or their products before today, and having read about both Arc and Dia, including reading this blog post you've linked, the product that makes me want to try it is the one they've stopped developing...
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14. emoII ◴[04 Sep 25 18:40 UTC] No.45130707{5}[source]▶
Yeah my plan is definitely to move to zen in the long run, it's mostly migrating workspaces and so on that hold me back
15. MarcelOlsz ◴[04 Sep 25 18:50 UTC] No.45130830[source]▶
My experience with Arc was installing it, asking myself "I have to pay to change the app icon? wtf" and uninstalling it. Horrendous UI as well.
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16. Valodim ◴[04 Sep 25 18:50 UTC] No.45130840{5}[source]▶
It is impressive what a single person with a vision can achieve hacking away on Firefox, especially considering Mozilla's track record in recent years.

A bus factor of 1 is still a bit red flag on something as involved as browser maintenance. Hopefully a community can emerge around the project.

ref: https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/graphs/contributors

17. deinonychus ◴[04 Sep 25 19:17 UTC] No.45131158{4}[source]▶
It's still worth trying and using. The developers consider it a "finished product" and I don't disagree. It does lots of small things well* that many browsers (even the self-confessed clones like Zen) don't do out of the box, if at all. Maybe in two years the browser will no longer be distributed or receive Chromium updates, but it exists and works fine now.

* For example, I get a lot of value from renaming my tabs and even replacing their favicons with emojis of my choice. Zen appears to have limited support for this.

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18. nofriend ◴[04 Sep 25 19:19 UTC] No.45131173{4}[source]▶
It was popular but had no real route to profitability. Hence the acquisition.
19. swores ◴[04 Sep 25 19:22 UTC] No.45131210{5}[source]▶
Thanks, I will do
20. jrflowers ◴[04 Sep 25 19:29 UTC] No.45131286[source]▶
When I saw that domain my first thought was it looks like they came up with the name by combining “diabetes” with “browser”
21. loloquwowndueo ◴[04 Sep 25 19:43 UTC] No.45131441{4}[source]▶
Lest they attempt to buy Google instead.
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22. chachra ◴[04 Sep 25 19:48 UTC] No.45131492[source]▶
same
23. mikodin ◴[04 Sep 25 19:55 UTC] No.45131560[source]▶
My hunch is a loyal user base.

Anecdotally, everyone I put onto Arc and the person who put me on still uses it.

I’ve been using Arc for the last two years and was genuinely sad on its discontinuation. I now don’t really know what I’ll do when it goes away.

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24. odo1242 ◴[04 Sep 25 20:08 UTC] No.45131680[source]▶
Personally I liked the UI (and now use Zen browser, the UI is very much a matter of taste though), but left as the browser itself kept getting worse
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25. odo1242 ◴[04 Sep 25 20:09 UTC] No.45131691[source]▶
Zen browser now has all the features of Arc (including folders, which they just added) if you’re willing to use a Firefox fork
26. MarcelOlsz ◴[04 Sep 25 20:34 UTC] No.45131931{3}[source]▶
That's very interesting. I downloaded arc because I saw it in some twitter screenshot and I thought the UI was neat, when I could have actually been looking for Zed instead of Arc.
27. ActionHank ◴[05 Sep 25 13:34 UTC] No.45138376{5}[source]▶
I think I would be ok with that, they can both be a mid, bureaucratic, mess together.