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Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company

(www.cnbc.com)
520 points kevinyew | 3 comments | 04 Sep 25 12:12 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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crowcroft ◴[04 Sep 25 15:30 UTC] 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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creatonez ◴[04 Sep 25 19:53 UTC] No.45131541[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.

I'm sorry, but this is the exact same insight that MSN Explorer had. And everyone in retrospect sees that as an absolute spamfest. Ironically, in a very similar way as AI features are seen today.

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1. foobarchu ◴[04 Sep 25 22:58 UTC] No.45133199[source]▶
Similarly, isn't this the insight that led to both ChromeOS and FirefoxOS?
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2. wpm ◴[05 Sep 25 00:41 UTC] No.45133847[source]▶
How many actual regular every day people are using either? ChromeOS's big market is "tired and underfunded K-12 IT/Library/HVAC admin who just doesn't give a fuck give the kids a chromebook so I can go do something else", it's not exactly making waves among the general populace.
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3. foobarchu ◴[05 Sep 25 02:25 UTC] No.45134428[source]▶
In my experience, very few. FirefoxOS failed hard, and anyone who uses ChromeOS quickly becomes acquainted with the limitations of the approach.

I mainly brought them up in a "we've tried this before" sense.