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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 h

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.

cryptozeus 1y ago
100% on point, classic case of drinking ai cool aid and killing what users wanted
- crowcroft 1y ago
  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-2025 https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > 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?
    - crowcroft 1y ago
      You're assuming that Dia is what Atlassian wanted in this acquisition, and nothing else. We don't know what things would look like if they had continued developing Arc. Almost every successful company has got there by grinding away on hard problems. No one launches a product and gets endless growth for free. Not to say that Arc would have definitely succeeded, but to date it's been a lot more successful than Dia.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        > You're assuming that Dia is what Atlassian wanted in this acquisition I thought it was an acquihire.
      - enos_feedler 1y ago
        They wanted Arc. The founders and others at Atlassian loved Arc. I am sure Dia is allowed to continue until it doesn’t work. Which it wont.
    - poly2it 1y ago
      > How often has that ever been a good decision? The migration to OSX or all Windows upgrades certainly payed off for those companies.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        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.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hahn-kev 1y ago
I think that we should be fine with growth flattening out.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
rvz 1y ago
Spent more money on marketing + steve jobs cosplaying than building a browser that is better than chrome but had zero revenue for years to show for it. They betted on the possibility that OpenAI or Perplexity would buy them. With the Google monopoly suit not requiring them to sell Chrome after all, there was no reason to raise any more money as they continued to lose money. That looks like an exit on terrible terms, like Humane and HP.
- rafram 1y ago
  Hard for it not to be better than Chrome, considering that it’s a Chrome fork with a few years of extra engineering thrown at it.
- crowcroft 1y ago
  All things considered the cash looks pretty good – maybe not the deal they wanted, but doesn't look bad all things considered.
bhouston 1y ago
> 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. Marc Andreessen said famously (or at least is paragraphed as saying) in 1994 that the "Browser is the Operating System" and people have been doing riffs on that since then. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/22/always-early-marc-andreessens-five-big-ideas-that-have-shaped-the-internet/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/22/always... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/09/software-internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/09/software-... This was also the idea behind Chromebooks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS
- crowcroft 1y ago
  Which is why tactics are so important. I would say no one has actually got the experience right yet, 'browser is the OS' has been true for a long time, and no one has delivered it yet. Similar to ambient computing and augmented reality.
  - niutech 1y ago
    > no one has delivered it yet Firefox OS? Now KaiOS? The 3rd most popular mobile OS.
  - mattlutze 1y ago
    One might suggest Cromebooks have done so well because Google got it more or less right.
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      I think that they had the fact that in chromebook, they could run whole linux containers in the browser , right?
    - jemmyw 1y ago
      I think Chromebooks have done so well because they're cheap and are purchased for locked down environments (education and people who really don't want complexity). Even then, I think they kind of demonstrate that the browser is NOT the OS because users and Google still felt the need to break out of the browser box, with both Android apps and Linux application support.
creatonez 1y ago
> 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.
- foobarchu 1y ago
  Similarly, isn't this the insight that led to both ChromeOS and FirefoxOS?
  - wpm 1y ago
    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.
    - foobarchu 1y ago
      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.
- dehrmann 1y ago
  > I'm sorry, but this is the exact same insight that MSN Explorer had The internet wasn't fast enough. There are a number of dot-com era ideas that were before their time for various reasons. There's also Wordle. That game could have been made (and I think variants were) for at least a 20-year window, but it caught on late in the pandemic when our streaming queues were exhausted.
mattlutze 1y ago
I'm a little surprised how many Chromium browser builders we have in the market, and how each continues to convince a group of investors that _they_ are going to be the ones to finally get it right, while still building on Chrome's skeleton. But, there's a bunch on WebKit and Gecko as well.
- crowcroft 1y ago
  On the other hand, it's kind of crazy no one can make an OS except Windows, Apple and Google? Trillion dollar market and no one can compete.
  - greymalik 1y ago
    RIP BeOS
  - conceptme 1y ago
    Linux?
  - coliveira 1y ago
    OS is the perfect software to create lock in for consumers. Once a company is successful there, it is very difficult for others to compete.
  - alemanek 1y ago
    Browsers display content that follows a very specific set of standards. There are also suites of tests to verify your compliance with those standards. So, every browser that is standards compliant should work for the vast majority of websites in existence. Still a big lift but doable for talented team. Now an OS without application compatibility is kind of DoA unless there is a very compelling reason to switch. Add in hardware compatibility and it gets even worse. Much bigger hill to climb then incorporating an existing browser engine into a custom spin of a browser. Even a browser engine from scratch would be smaller than a new bare metal OS.
  - butterfi 1y ago
    Linux has entered the chat...
blehn 1y ago
Isn't that basically the same premise as Chrome, which already dominates the market? Google even made something called ChromeOS. Arc wasn't really more than a distracting skin on Chromium with a few innovative bits of UI...
- bageljlin17 1y ago
  Exactly, they basically have better designer. For the real tech feature, I really don't think they ever brings any new invention to the product. Data sync, AI, etc. All other competitors have these features. They even need to count on chromium update.
  - knr2345 1y ago
    Did they drop data sync? Could have sworn all of my spaces, tabs, folders, favorites and etc synced anytime I logged back in on my other machine (with access to spaces on iOS well) It’s been a while since I used it regularly though.
al_borland 1y ago
This wasn't a new insight by Arc. ChromeOS exists. Palm's WebOS was a thing. Even Apple pitched rich web apps as the avenue for 3rd party developers to make things for the original iPhone, they were just a bit too early. There is even Electron, for web apps to run as desktop apps on all major operating systems. Most browsers can also turn any website into a self-contained web app that lives along side other local apps. I don't think Arc ever realized their vision. They gave some cryptic ideas of their vision for the future of the web, but I don't feel like they fundamentally changed anything. I was expecting Arc to eventually get to a place where I could login to Arc on any computer and have my home session, always up to date anywhere I was. Of course, this idea would have been a lot better in the 90s or 00s when computer labs were more common and everyone didn't have a computer in their pocket. The value of a cloud OS isn't as appealing as it once was. In terms of growth flattening out; they threw in the towel too early. It was only after they stopped adding new features and decided to give up on Arc that it seemed to really start to get traction. I was seeing blog posts and YouTube videos left and right about Arc, all while knowing that it was effectively dead, but the memo never made it to the people who just found it and were sharing it like crazy. A new browser from a new company, that piggybacks on the browser that already has 70+% marketshare isn't going to take over the world in a few years. It was a long play and they were too impatient, and had already given up by the time they started to get some real traction outside of the early adopter space. I remember when Firefox really hit the mainstream. Friends would see friends using IE, and push them out of the way to install Firefox. It felt very grass roots, but it worked... it just took time.
- niutech 1y ago
  You forgot about Firefox OS, which had a fully web-based UI.
- chillfox 1y ago
  Doesn't help that it didn't run on Linux (where a lot of people are willing to check out new tech), I kept checking in on it a few times a year, but it was never available. I have gotten people to use Firefox and Chrome in the past, but I did not push Arc to anyone as I could not use it myself.
- 1y ago
barrell 1y ago
IIRC growth wasn’t flattening, it was growing pretty fast, basically hockey stick. It just wasn’t hockey stick enough to get to a billion users quickly. At least, that was their justification publicly, maybe the real numbers were less optimistic

cryptozeus 1y ago

100% on point, classic case of drinking ai cool aid and killing what users wanted

crowcroft 1y ago
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-2025 https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/letter-to-arc-members-...
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > 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?
  - crowcroft 1y ago
    You're assuming that Dia is what Atlassian wanted in this acquisition, and nothing else. We don't know what things would look like if they had continued developing Arc. Almost every successful company has got there by grinding away on hard problems. No one launches a product and gets endless growth for free. Not to say that Arc would have definitely succeeded, but to date it's been a lot more successful than Dia.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      > You're assuming that Dia is what Atlassian wanted in this acquisition I thought it was an acquihire.
    - enos_feedler 1y ago
      They wanted Arc. The founders and others at Atlassian loved Arc. I am sure Dia is allowed to continue until it doesn’t work. Which it wont.
  - poly2it 1y ago
    > How often has that ever been a good decision? The migration to OSX or all Windows upgrades certainly payed off for those companies.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      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.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

hahn-kev 1y ago

I think that we should be fine with growth flattening out.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

rvz 1y ago

Spent more money on marketing + steve jobs cosplaying than building a browser that is better than chrome but had zero revenue for years to show for it. They betted on the possibility that OpenAI or Perplexity would buy them. With the Google monopoly suit not requiring them to sell Chrome after all, there was no reason to raise any more money as they continued to lose money. That looks like an exit on terrible terms, like Humane and HP.

rafram 1y ago
Hard for it not to be better than Chrome, considering that it’s a Chrome fork with a few years of extra engineering thrown at it.
crowcroft 1y ago
All things considered the cash looks pretty good – maybe not the deal they wanted, but doesn't look bad all things considered.

bhouston 1y ago

> 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. Marc Andreessen said famously (or at least is paragraphed as saying) in 1994 that the "Browser is the Operating System" and people have been doing riffs on that since then. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/22/always-early-marc-andreessens-five-big-ideas-that-have-shaped-the-internet/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/22/always... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/09/software-internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/09/software-... This was also the idea behind Chromebooks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS

crowcroft 1y ago
Which is why tactics are so important. I would say no one has actually got the experience right yet, 'browser is the OS' has been true for a long time, and no one has delivered it yet. Similar to ambient computing and augmented reality.
- niutech 1y ago
  > no one has delivered it yet Firefox OS? Now KaiOS? The 3rd most popular mobile OS.
- mattlutze 1y ago
  One might suggest Cromebooks have done so well because Google got it more or less right.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    I think that they had the fact that in chromebook, they could run whole linux containers in the browser , right?
  - jemmyw 1y ago
    I think Chromebooks have done so well because they're cheap and are purchased for locked down environments (education and people who really don't want complexity). Even then, I think they kind of demonstrate that the browser is NOT the OS because users and Google still felt the need to break out of the browser box, with both Android apps and Linux application support.

creatonez 1y ago

> 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.

foobarchu 1y ago
Similarly, isn't this the insight that led to both ChromeOS and FirefoxOS?
- wpm 1y ago
  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.
  - foobarchu 1y ago
    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.
dehrmann 1y ago
> I'm sorry, but this is the exact same insight that MSN Explorer had The internet wasn't fast enough. There are a number of dot-com era ideas that were before their time for various reasons. There's also Wordle. That game could have been made (and I think variants were) for at least a 20-year window, but it caught on late in the pandemic when our streaming queues were exhausted.

mattlutze 1y ago

I'm a little surprised how many Chromium browser builders we have in the market, and how each continues to convince a group of investors that _they_ are going to be the ones to finally get it right, while still building on Chrome's skeleton. But, there's a bunch on WebKit and Gecko as well.

crowcroft 1y ago
On the other hand, it's kind of crazy no one can make an OS except Windows, Apple and Google? Trillion dollar market and no one can compete.
- greymalik 1y ago
  RIP BeOS
- conceptme 1y ago
  Linux?
- coliveira 1y ago
  OS is the perfect software to create lock in for consumers. Once a company is successful there, it is very difficult for others to compete.
- alemanek 1y ago
  Browsers display content that follows a very specific set of standards. There are also suites of tests to verify your compliance with those standards. So, every browser that is standards compliant should work for the vast majority of websites in existence. Still a big lift but doable for talented team. Now an OS without application compatibility is kind of DoA unless there is a very compelling reason to switch. Add in hardware compatibility and it gets even worse. Much bigger hill to climb then incorporating an existing browser engine into a custom spin of a browser. Even a browser engine from scratch would be smaller than a new bare metal OS.
- butterfi 1y ago
  Linux has entered the chat...

blehn 1y ago

Isn't that basically the same premise as Chrome, which already dominates the market? Google even made something called ChromeOS. Arc wasn't really more than a distracting skin on Chromium with a few innovative bits of UI...

bageljlin17 1y ago
Exactly, they basically have better designer. For the real tech feature, I really don't think they ever brings any new invention to the product. Data sync, AI, etc. All other competitors have these features. They even need to count on chromium update.
- knr2345 1y ago
  Did they drop data sync? Could have sworn all of my spaces, tabs, folders, favorites and etc synced anytime I logged back in on my other machine (with access to spaces on iOS well) It’s been a while since I used it regularly though.

al_borland 1y ago

This wasn't a new insight by Arc. ChromeOS exists. Palm's WebOS was a thing. Even Apple pitched rich web apps as the avenue for 3rd party developers to make things for the original iPhone, they were just a bit too early. There is even Electron, for web apps to run as desktop apps on all major operating systems. Most browsers can also turn any website into a self-contained web app that lives along side other local apps. I don't think Arc ever realized their vision. They gave some cryptic ideas of their vision for the future of the web, but I don't feel like they fundamentally changed anything. I was expecting Arc to eventually get to a place where I could login to Arc on any computer and have my home session, always up to date anywhere I was. Of course, this idea would have been a lot better in the 90s or 00s when computer labs were more common and everyone didn't have a computer in their pocket. The value of a cloud OS isn't as appealing as it once was. In terms of growth flattening out; they threw in the towel too early. It was only after they stopped adding new features and decided to give up on Arc that it seemed to really start to get traction. I was seeing blog posts and YouTube videos left and right about Arc, all while knowing that it was effectively dead, but the memo never made it to the people who just found it and were sharing it like crazy. A new browser from a new company, that piggybacks on the browser that already has 70+% marketshare isn't going to take over the world in a few years. It was a long play and they were too impatient, and had already given up by the time they started to get some real traction outside of the early adopter space. I remember when Firefox really hit the mainstream. Friends would see friends using IE, and push them out of the way to install Firefox. It felt very grass roots, but it worked... it just took time.

niutech 1y ago
You forgot about Firefox OS, which had a fully web-based UI.
chillfox 1y ago
Doesn't help that it didn't run on Linux (where a lot of people are willing to check out new tech), I kept checking in on it a few times a year, but it was never available. I have gotten people to use Firefox and Chrome in the past, but I did not push Arc to anyone as I could not use it myself.
1y ago

barrell 1y ago

IIRC growth wasn’t flattening, it was growing pretty fast, basically hockey stick. It just wasn’t hockey stick enough to get to a billion users quickly. At least, that was their justification publicly, maybe the real numbers were less optimistic