Atlassian Agrees To Acquire The Browser Co. For $610 Million (cnbc.com) 18
Atlassian said it has agreed to acquire The Browser Co., a startup that offers a web browser with AI features, for $610 million in cash. CNBC: The companies aim to close the deal in Atlassian's fiscal second quarter, which ends in December. Established in 2019, The Browser Co. has gone up against some of the world's largest companies, including Google, with Chrome, and Apple, which includes Safari on its computers running MacOS. The startup debuted Arc, a customizable browser with a built-in whiteboard and the ability to share groups of tabs, in 2022.
The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers. Further reading: Atlassian Buying The Browser Company Feels Like a Waste of Money.
The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers. Further reading: Atlassian Buying The Browser Company Feels Like a Waste of Money.
Who is asking for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Dia browser, a simpler option that allows people to chat with an AI assistant about multiple browser tabs at once, became available in beta in June. Atlassian co-founder and CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said he sees shortcomings in the most popular browsers for those who do much of their work on computers.
Who is asking for AI to assist in web browsing? I see this shit being shoveled at us from all directions, but the internet is already flooded with AI generated garbage, and now we need AI built into the browser to filter through the garbage before we take in the information? That's two extra levels of bullshit just to make sure we can't source information directly, and I don't know of a single end-user that really wants any of it.
We're crapflooding our crapfloods. The info-spew of the Internet has now become the crapflood apocalypse. I must admit, as much as we all knew it was coming, it's coming much faster than even the most imaginative of us had predicted. If the "shortcomings in the most popular browsers" are that they actually allow us to see what it is we're looking for, then apparently we're getting yet another layer of crapflood added to the crapflood. It's crapflood squared, and nobody's really asking for the original crapflood to begin with.
Maybe this is my old man yells at clouds moment, but I'm seriously feeling like screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?" at half the stories I read on tech sites now. It's like we're rushing headlong towards a future where we have no grip at all or the reality we're living in, and not only are we not trying to find a grip, we're trying to grease up the walls so no one else can get a grip either.
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These are all results of destructive agendas, nepotism and crony capitalism. The only solution is to prevent them from destroying by taking them out of positions of power and influence.
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I occasionally use the "Deep Research" function which will do all the "googling" for you, gather the sources and summarize, especially if it's something a bit more specific. For example, I was not sure if a certain bike trail was paved all the way to do it with a road bike and I couldn't find this information on the official site. So instead of trying to figure out what sites to check, translate each site from Italian to English and try to dig out this particular info I ask the AI to do it for me. It takes a few minutes, digs through all relavant sites, even discussion forums etc.. gives you an answer and backs it up with sources so you can still go and read it on your own. It is sometimes much easier to have AI do it for you than doom scrolling through random sites, hope your adblock works, trying to ctrl+f for the specific information you are looking for etc.. There are certainly good use cases for this out there so I wouldn't just yell at it.
The ones that provide sources so you can check yourself seem to be very rare. These I don't mind so much. The ones that just gush out info at you with no sources to check drive me absolutely batshit if it's a subject I don't know, and make me even more angry when it's a subject I do know, because most of what they say doesn't seem to relate to reality at all.
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CEOs of companies selling AI products or AI enhancements to their products. That's who is asking for it.
Re: Who is asking for this? (Score:2)
Ohhh boy (Score:2)
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For that reason alone, Atlassian is a great vessel to contain something so ill-conceived as an AI-driven browser and prevent it from becoming accidentally usable.
Gotta do something with AI (Score:2)
It is so stupid. You can almost feel the pressure CEOs are facing: what are you doing for AI.
Have some courage and respond: not much!
Instead they do something. Anything. It will be interesting to look back at this acquisition in a few years. Iâ(TM)m betting this thing will be dead and buried. With a few bits of technology folded in their other products to lessen their embarrassment.
It was nice while it lasted. (Score:1)
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Perplexity (Score:2)
I've been using Perplexity for some things recently and it is surprisingly helpful. More like an agent than a simple browser. It lists the sites it has looked at as a result of your query and summarizes the results, it has saved me some time.
Re: Perplexity (Score:2)
RIP Arc (Score:1)
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First get rid of all the annoying emoticons =/ :) (Score:2)
I can't paste a piece of SQL in JIRA without having multiple parts getting replaced by emoticons.
Reporting a serious issue and have all kinds of smileys around the place doesn't contribute to conveying the severity of bug reports.
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Try using a code block. Or, because Jira understands a lot of markdown tagging, just use a triple-backtick (```).