David Pierce, writing for The Verge:

Mike Cannon-Brookes, the CEO of enterprise software giant Atlassian, was one of the first users of the Arc browser. Over the last several years, he has been a prolific bug reporter and feature requester. Now he’ll own the thing: Atlassian is acquiring The Browser Company, the New York-based startup that makes both Arc and the new AI-focused Dia browser. Atlassian is paying $610 million in cash for The Browser Company, and plans to run it as an independent entity.

The conversations that led to the deal started about a year ago, says Josh Miller, The Browser Company’s CEO. Lots of Atlassian employees were using Arc, and “they reached out wondering, how could we get more enterprise-ready?” Miller says. Big companies require data privacy, security, and management features in the software they use, and The Browser Company didn’t offer enough of them.

I get it. Later in the same article, there’s this:

As for what this all means for The Browser Company’s browsers, it’s still too early to say for sure. Miller promises no favored-nation features for Atlassian products, nor any Microsoft Edge-style popups begging you to sign up for Jira. Miller says the team is even more committed to being a truly cross-platform product, and that Windows in particular is about to get a lot more attention.

But “How could we get more enterprise-ready?” has never been a north-star principle for great user-focused software. I personally have never seen the appeal of Arc or Dia, but Safari truly speaks to me and my taste. Alternative browsers, by definition, are meant for people who are dissatisfied with existing browsers. So while I don’t use Arc or Dia, I’ve always been rooting for The Browser Company. I even dig the company name.

But this seems like bad news. I just don’t see how Atlassian/Jira DNA can possibly be a good thing to inject into an innovative user-focused web browser.

Dave Michaels and Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow market forces to do the work,” Mehta wrote.

Wall Street analysts scored the ruling a huge win for Google and Apple since it allowed an existing arrangement to continue in which Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the default search provider on the Safari browser.

I’m picking nits here, but I think part of the ruling is that Google can no longer pay to be the default search engine. And, in my opinion, they never needed to, and never should have put that into their contracts for these deals. They’re just paying Apple (and Mozilla, and Samsung, and others) for the actual search traffic that goes to Google from those companies’ browsers. It’s up to Apple whether Google is the default Safari search engine (which it is, and will continue to be). It just won’t be in the terms of the deal that Google search has to be the default.

The ruling paves the way for the two companies to partner further on AI-related services on Apple devices, analysts said. Apple currently has a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into various iPhone services. Apple and Google have had talks about striking a similar deal for Google’s AI system called Gemini.

I wonder if this antitrust ruling was the holdup on Apple announcing Gemini as an Apple Intelligence partner? Apple, famously, almost never talks about future plans, but at last year’s WWDC, Craig Federighi made conspicuous mention of Google Gemini as a potential Apple Intelligence partner — and now here we are 14 months later and it hasn’t yet happened.

Also, re: this decision being largely a win for Google — it just never made sense to me that Chrome even is a sellable asset.

There are finallys, and there are finallys. Apple shipped the original iPad in April 2010. Instagram shipped in October 2010 — and was iPhone-exclusive until 2012. That Instagram didn’t ship a native iPad version of its app until now is really one of the strangest things in tech. But here it is.

One significant difference from Instagram on phones is that on iPad, it defaults to the Reels view, and you have to tap below Reels in the sidebar to get to your following timeline. Adam Mosseri explains their thinking behind this in this Reel (natch).

David McCabe, reporting for The New York Times:

Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival companies but does not need to break itself up by selling its Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The decision, by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, falls short of the sweeping changes proposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley.

Judge Mehta said in the 223-page ruling that Google must share some of its search data with “qualified competitors” to resolve its monopoly. The Justice Department had asked the judge to force the company to share even more of its data, arguing it was key to Google’s dominance.

Judge Mehta also put restrictions on payments that Google uses to ensure its search engine gets prime placement in web browsers and on smartphones. But he stopped short of banning those payments entirely and did not grant the government’s request that Google be forced to sell Chrome, which the government said was necessary to remedy the company’s power as a search monopoly.

“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Judge Mehta said in Tuesday’s decision. “This court has done so.”

No forced divestiture of Chrome or Android, and Google is allowed to continue making traffic acquisition cost payments to companies like Apple (for search in Safari) and Mozilla (for search in Firefox). The decision seems very reasonable to me. And while the entire ruling is 223 pages, Judge Mehta included a good summary at the front. You can get a feel for it just by reading the first few pages.

Atlassian (tweet, Hacker News): We’ve entered into an agreement to acquire The Browser Company of New York, the team behind the incredible Dia and Arc browsers. By combining The Browser Company’s passion for building browsers people love with Atlassian’s deep expertise on how the world’s best teams operate, we have the opportunity to transform how […]