Atlassian Is Acquiring the Browser Company
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Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for $610M, sparking skepticism about the strategic fit and concerns about the future of Arc and Dia browsers amidst AI integration.
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The main feature being touted is the ability to take context from multiple tabs and ... do something with it? So unconstrained access to what you're doing in multiple tabs feeding into exactly what and why? The announcement is concerning because it mentions "AI skills" which are, of course, nonexistent.
If anything, the "arc" of The Browser Company proves a fundamental tenet of the post-capitalist era: You can get rich without making or selling any products that anyone wants. It's all stock transactions between wealthly elites. The software, if any, is an afterthought.
This prompted him to build his own platform he would want to use instead of Trello. Basically claiming that Trello for teams is dead due to the transition to a "personal producitivty companion" xD
You can check out the post here if interested in reading more and even giving the pro plan for his platform free forever for 30 days.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1ndj8mn/remembering_t...
Anyway, the idea of making Dia into the knowledge worker's browser sounds good.
For me, this new browser would be successful the day I prefer to run Linear and Notion in Dia rather than using the companies' own Electron desktop apps (which are pretty terrible on Mac at least, so the bar is not necessarily very high).
I just don't understand how they can with a straight face say "Today’s browsers weren’t built for work." when their entire business relies on browsers ability to do exactly that and have basically been fine (heavy javascript usage in Jira aside which this is not going to magically fix).
Looking at any of this I just don't see what this is actually supposed to solve.
I suppose the good thing with AI is we're coming close to being able to roll our own versions of whatever we want when the software we were using ascends to the enterprise plane.
We’ve found it’s actually quicker to just recreate the app (Postman, Obsidian, Claude desktop) than it is to go through the rigmarole of getting the download/license approved.
I understand that a lot of people live in their browsers, but for web apps I’d rather split them out into “installed” PWAs and have them benefit from system app/window management facilities than have them clog up my browser’s tabs.
Browsers make terrible operating systems. People live in their browsers because they have to, not because they want to.
Native app updaters and tray icons and startup services are incredibly obnoxious.
Same deal with updaters. If macOS and Windows had a standardized way to update apps Linux distros do that wouldn’t be nearly as annoying.
Startup services and to some degree tray icons fall under enshittification. Some apps have a legitimate need for these (like Alfred or Raycast or an audio mixer applet) but most are blatant mindspace/metrics booster grabs.
For me the upsides of web apps are counteracted by omnipresent annoying browser chrome, resource consumption, and the general flakiness stemming from nobody being able to agree on how to develop web app UIs (even just within the React sphere, let alone beyond it). The number of manhours set on fire and level of potential for refinement left on the table by the innumerable redundant bespoke widget reimplementations is unreal.
Yep. "Every app ships most of Chrome" is a profoundly stupid way to get a sensible cross-platform application runtime to develop on, but it's the only one that works, and at that point you might as well make the app run in actual Chrome instead.
> general flakiness stemming from nobody being able to agree on how to develop web app UIs (even just within the React sphere, let alone beyond it). The number of manhours set on fire and level of potential for refinement left on the table by the innumerable redundant bespoke widget reimplementations is unreal.
Disagree. That's creative destruction at work, it's messy but it's the only way to get better. Like it or not (and I don't like it), the best UIs around these days are built on React or similar webtech.
It may be a matter of perspective, but from where I’m standing web UIs have barely improved in the past 5-7 years. In many products they’ve gotten considerably worse. At the very least, there’s been an awful lot of tail chasing for the amount of improvement yielded.
There’s your answer.
> less than 10% of organizations have adopted a secure browser
Yes Gartner, let's invent a "secure enterprise browser", because there's too much interoperability on the web - there's definitely some business on splitting that up. I'm sure atlassian people love that idea.
That's the value prop (along with better application interop+) of the Here browser.
+ I do think the File System API did somewhat mitigate this value prop.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
[1] https://www.island.io
For Windows shops, Edge is already an "enterprise browser." I can control literally every aspect of it via MDM policies or Group Policy for the on-prem AD folks. If using EntraID, SSO is already included, and you can go as far as whitelisting sites as well. I can set custom tab groups, pinned tabs, etc all with policy.
Even on non-managed/BYOD devices, once signed in to the work account Edge can be managed the same way via MAM policies. I can even force documents and links from other "work" apps to open in the managed Edge profile.
The only thing Here seems to offer that I couldn't configure Edge to do is the split-pane view in their "Supertabs" but Edge does have the sidebar, that I can configure to be pinned with Teams, Outlook, Copilot, etc.
It could be a few options away on Firefox for example if people cared about the "secure" part more than the "enterprise sales" part.
Enterprise browsers are an existing category, and even Google offers an enterprise version of Chrome.
The idea of an enterprise browser is that all of the interoperability that has been built has been between the desktop and web servers. Most desktop browsers don't have many features that allow an organization to manage them, beyond managed policies which honestly aren't that great. For the most part, standard desktop browsers are a big hole in both inbound and outbound security.
Also, my point was just just say that there's a market for something like this. Chrome Enterprise is not even really that competitive of a product in the space.
For the most part, default Chrome and Firefox are designed primarily for B2C use cases.
Atlassian would want integration with their backend products to increase lock-in and provide a place where their products are centered. IT control how products are presented to end users in organizations that matter (in terms of sales volume.) Establishing visibility and driving engagement is hard if the Atlassian tools are a niche and they want to attack SharePoint or other products. Being able to more efficiently use the tools the company has bought is attractive (even if not a reality.)
Making their browser incompatible is a bad outcome for them because it's an IT choice to adopt their browser. This carries visibility and risk for IT who could be embarrassed. Any backlash carries over to other Atlassian products or affects renewals.
I don't believe that in a long term. If atlassian creates an enterprise-managed browser they can charge for, there will be a big incentive to making their suite work better in that browser only. Or JIRA/Confluence features will be released using APIs only available there. It will be their EEE.
If they really cared about actual security, they'd optimise their services enough to use them with JIT disabled. And maybe push the industry to do the same. And publish some SSO auth standard that integrates with the browser.
> Any backlash carries over to other Atlassian products
Atlassian doesn't care about users and what they think. If they did, markdown textboxes would still be there and JIRA wouldn't be a slow abomination. But they sell to businesses, not users. So instead of fixed issues or QoL improvements, I get an AI button.
That just sounds like going back to making thick clients/desktop apps vs. web with extra steps. They might as well make their own native Jira app instead of making an entire web browser and breaking their web app to only work in their new browser.
A secure browser was never a concern.
Because majority of malware if not all was written for PCs. Nowadays still most of the malware targets PCs but now attacks targeting web users are more prevalent. Attackers attack through compromised websites or phishing websites using social engineering techniques or exploit kits[0]. Websites are dominant attack surface not web browsers because it is hard to find 0-day exploits and usually they are found and used by state sponsored attackers. Chrome is still the most secure browser because it has enormous market share and everybody is attacking it, both whitehat and blackhat actors so Chrome team is constantly fixing and patching Chrome.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_kit
My point is this is coded language to give corporations an excuse to have another foothold on their employee's data.
Think about putting your business VPN and security controls in the browser. And if you can put your connection to AI and start building a productive workflow around it, that's an interesting proposition. It doesn't change interoperability on the web; it's a controlled client for the business use case.
This is being marketed to an entirely different group.
I will keep suggesting Atlassian, because everything else I used since the 1990's was worse.
I do think that selling a browser is going to be an extremely difficult task, so having an enterprise software machine with huge customer base might help it, but Atlassian strikes me as a company that will eventually just kill the project and turn this into a de facto acquihire.
I think he's still using it. He probably would have paid something for it.
But then overnight they just weren't interested on building it. So strange.
I immediately thought Sandwich made it. Some of their stuff like https://youtu.be/5GeR8XTWR3M?si=RX-NBCMicnUPw1jA is so good I just periodically watch it.
If The Browser Company folks made that video, their superpower is really marketing and you are actually correct. But I feel like it must have been an agency.
They did help push the established players in the field forward a bit though, so I will be thankful for that.
Also: It's always funny to see how people really feel about an acquisition. eg the comments in this thread feel like a eulogy.
Was Atlassian the highest bidder, or was Atlassian the only bidder?
"A new AI browser from the makers of Arc: Chat with your tabs"
say what??? )))
Perhaps Atlassian was sitting on cash and needed to make some bets. If you can build a big enough user base for a browser it can earn handsomely from AdWords type referral fees. Look at what Google pays Apple to be default on Safari and how much referral spend Chrome recouped for Google etc. Maybe Atlassian will try and promote Dia to its customer base and look to launch more AI type commercial product discovery experiences like Perplexity Shopping.
Perhaps investors should put on a stupidity discount and discount the value of cash when valuing the value of equity!
The reality is, most people at the top of these firms had great initial success because they had some advantage but over time, you realise that advantage acquired can be explained more by luck than skill.
Very few can have sustained success.
Does Atlassian want them to become an Enterprise AI arm?
Arc is still irreplaceable for its true separation of tab and window, it’s like tmux for browser, I haven’t seen any other browser do that.
In Zen, if you open two windows, they have different set of tab instances; in Arc, you have same set of tab instances.
If you can raise a github issue, we can get to work asap https://github.com/browseros-ai/BrowserOS
On top of that, Zen can be personalized with CSS. As someone who spends a lot of time in the browser, it's been awesome to be able to tailor it to my needs. https://docs.zen-browser.app/guides/live-editing
I know Firefox is the "right" option, and I'm fully in favour of chipping away at Chromium marketshare (even if the EU is determined to solidify it further with demands of Apple to allow non-Safari rendering in iOS) but I've used it in the past, and even if it's fine 99% of the time, there is that occasional website that has issues because web devs only test in Chromium. And it leaves me with an ever-looming sense of "is this broken because the site is actually broken or was it just not tested with anything but Chrome?" and then I'm obsessively opening Chrome every time I have an issue to test it there.
So I figured I'll just use one of the many Chromium-based alternatives that's going to continue supporting manifest V2, and I've generally heard good things about them anyway. Edge is off the table since Microsoft said they'd only support it as long as Google did, and I already swore it off after using it for like the first year after they switched to Chromium and it was okay, but it quickly got destroyed by the typical suspects at Microsoft, turning it into a Microsoft adware shitshow. Not to mention their quality control was clearly not up to snuff cause they frequently pushed terribly broken builds to stable, which I rarely experienced with Chrome in 15-ish years of using it.
I tried Arc a little bit but something about the onboarding process and browser experience feels more like their top priority is being cute and unique rather than just making a good browser.
I've settled on Brave for now. After disabling all their crapware, it's been... okay. But like Edge, it seems to have some quality control issues. I have very weird performance issues, like for a long time typing in the youtube comment box would be incredibly laggy. I think that's mostly fixed now? But I still get regular issues where the entire browser will lock up if I'm playing a video and I pull the tab into a separate window, and I have to kill the window to unfreeze everything. The bugs are annoying on their own but it also gives me concern about the skillset of the people making it. I'm trusting my browser with fairly sensitive data, and who knows how difficult it will be in a few years to continue supporting manifest V2. They got all that work done for them by Google/open source contributors. Wouldn't surprise me if Google maliciously made manifest V2 more and more difficult to support by moving Chromium in a direction that's increasingly incompatible with it.
could've shortened this to 'Edge is off the table since its Microsoft' :)
If you see bugs, you can probably assume they're just regular ol' bugs most of the time. A lot of the web is just plain broken or badly designed.
So I'll see if I can make FF work but it's mostly cause it's the best option at this point.
Report compatibility issues and they'll either try to work with the websites or browser vendors to mitigate the issue.
AI seems like a feature to add to existing browsers, not something that needs its own dedicated browser. People’s workflows get tied to a browser, especially one like Arc, so to proclaim it done, with no need for any new features after just a couple years, while most expect a browser to carry on for decades, left a really bad taste in my mouth.
I was excited when they launched, but won’t miss them. They felt more like a dev backed hype machine. I’m not sure what Atlassian has planned, but won’t be surprised if they kill the browsers and integrate some tools into their existing product line.
Why would I try/migrate to a new workflow after they axed my old one. You can't rebuild customer trust after that
$0.
That's like 17 hot new frameworks out of date!
Also 2 years or even 4 years is not that long at all
And can you read dog minds?
And your dog wants pets and treats.
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.
Haven’t used Arc as my daily driver in a while now, but I used a similar setup with a semi-bright green sidebar as my debugging space when my last project was in active development. I’m rarely at a desk these days so back to Safari for the time being, but one thing I miss the most is Arc’s near-borderless window ‘frame’.
I can’t say I’d be above taking the briefcase full of money when dangled in front of my face, but when that’s the goal from the outset, the incentive structure feels backward.
This is why I have problems trusting any new SaaS these days. The industry has changed from wanting to build a good product to wanting to grow fast and then exit, and typically the users get screwed.
You just can't trust that anything will stick around, so why bother adopting the tool in the first place, especially for anything that's not open source.
Anyways, now we are building BrowserOS, an open-source alternative to Dia -- https://github.com/browseros-ai/BrowserOS
Edit: lol I read conned as convinced.
And there are plenty of stories of how they treat their employees that suggest there are absolutely mistakes being made.... company is a joke.
It doesn’t feel like a strong strategic or product fit. These are all complex power user products meant to serve enterprises at scale. Integration doesn’t seem useful either. Bummer but congrats to the team!
Dia is a joke, but I guess it has a chance in the age of ever-more-popular AI functionality.
My only curiosity is whether this means that Atlassian will lock these browsers down to just paying customers or keep some limited functionality versions available for personal use. Of all the companies who might’ve bought TBC, I did not expect Atlassian, based on the services they offer already.
Then again, all the potential anti-trust stuff happening with Google and the push to separate Google from Chrome could be a bit catalyst for this move.
But there's an even worse company that wanted to buy them out of losing money and has no solid plan to use it.
This looks like a very bad deal, equivalent to the Humane and HP acquisition.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42213288
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/04/atlassian-the-browser-compan...
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