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520 points kevinyew | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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crowcroft ◴[] No.45128398[source]
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 entirely new idea about AI.

I wouldn't be surprised if the investors were fed up with the business and wanted out, pretty good exit all things considered.

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cryptozeus ◴[] No.45128530[source]
100% on point, classic case of drinking ai cool aid and killing what users wanted
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crowcroft ◴[] No.45128693[source]
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-...

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MangoToupe ◴[] No.45129858[source]
> 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?

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1. poly2it ◴[] No.45131488[source]
> How often has that ever been a good decision?

The migration to OSX or all Windows upgrades certainly payed off for those companies.

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2. MangoToupe ◴[] No.45133095[source]
I don't think this is a good comparison. There are many startups that have succeeded developing good products, but very few that could match the success of Apple.