Atlassian acquires The Browser Company, creators of Arc browser

About two years ago, a browser named Arc went viral. The app had a unique vertical sidebar that held all your tabs and bookmarks, maximizing screen real estate for the actual web content. It didn't quite reach mainstream adoption, but it certainly earned a loyal following.

Apart from its unique UI at the time, you could organize your work and personal life with this thing called "Spaces". Another great feature was native Split View, which lets you open and view two different websites in the same tab. But then, in May this year, the Browser Company of New York, the makers of Arc, "killed" it. The browser was put into "maintenance mode", which means it will get security fixes but no new features.

Now, The Browser Company is getting acquired by Atlassian, the company behind products like Trello, Jira, and Bitbucket, for around $610 million in cash.

In its blog post announcing the acquisition, Atlassian argued that modern-day browsers were built for a different internet, one designed for passive browsing instead of active work. This makes sense, especially since these apps were designed well before SaaS and LLMs became popular.

The enterprise software company believes that an AI-enabled browser is needed as it can be "optimized for the SaaS apps where you spend your day", meaning it understands the context of what you are doing in Jira or Google Docs instead of treating every tab the same.

After The Browser Company killed Arc, the team started working on Dia, its AI-focused browser built to be a mix between a web browser and a chatbot. Dia has an AI-Powered URL bar that lets you ask questions about your open tabs or summarize articles directly from the address bar.

Atlassian says it will build upon Dia to make a browser for the so-called Knowledge Worker. The goal is to build a tool that can leverage AI to "connect the dots between your apps, tabs, and tasks." The company also said the browser will be built with security, compliance, and admin controls.

Like it or not, several Silicon Valley companies have decided that the future of browsers is AI. No longer will your browser just do one thing; it will do many things. Microsoft has already started testing a new feature for its Edge browser called "Copilot Mode", Firefox version 141 introduced on-device AI-powered tab grouping, and Google is also integrating its AI models into Chrome.

Unlike its competitors, Vivaldi is promising to never add an LLM chatbot, webpage summarization, or an AI form filler into the Vivaldi browser. You can learn why in this article.