> “Island has created a whole new way of thinking about enterprise work. By fundamentally transforming the work environment to be secure-by-design, the Island Enterprise Browser enables organizations to achieve entirely new levels of security, productivity, and IT efficiency,” added Fey.
These "whole new ways about thinking about enterprise work" frequently translate to endless micro-management and requesting permissions from the gods of IT to do what's often very necessary to your job.
It's not really possible to just "turn in your notice" (like someone else suggested) if you get this sort of micromanagey corporate spyware installed – but I would definitely treat it as a negative while looking at and negotiating job offers. Clearly the market for this sort of nonsense is high, so it needs to be addressed via the market.
For folks who are managers or similar, trying to get productive output from a programmer while forcing them to use intrusive corporate spyware is like locking an artist in a cell, putting a camera on them, and saying "Paint the best artwork you can". Please avoid doing this as far as possible.
And to address an immediate reply that often comes up – no, SOC2 doesn't mean you have to do this; simple home-grown software suffices. Yes, we know your compliance audits cost a lot. Believe me, losing a fully-trained software developer also costs a lot in the current market. Find unintrusive, basic software that will satisfy your needs with easy controls for advanced users. The real controls are that you should be able to trust the software developers that are creating ridiculous amounts of value for your company.
I doubt the target market for this product is as a web browser for developers. Seems like a reasonably useful product if you want to deploy a call center application as a web application or an application for some sort of data entry in a bank or financial institution. In that case it makes total sense to heavily restrict what functionality is available in the browser.
Any required, installed software is a red flag for me. I've been working for an all-remote web shop for the last decade. They don't care what software we use to create our deliverables. It's our own software on our own hardware, and as long as we can do the work, it's up to us. The only time a particular browser is required is if we have a browser-specific bug. (I'm not sure there's a choice for the VPN authenticator, but there is for pretty much everything else.)
There are a few SAAS apps that we all use to communicate. But except for sysops we work on our local machines most of the time. I find this to be a wonderful perk, and would probably more than hesitate to lose it. Hopefully this model and the growth of remote work puts a serious crimp in Island's market size.
> Although Island’s service is built on the same Chromium engine as many popular browsers, and therefore has a familiar interface, it places a number of restrictions on the way in which end users can interact with the web. For example, the Island browser gives security teams control over simple functionality such as copy-and-paste, screen capture and content downloads. It also places limits on the kinds of extensions that can be installed and the domains that can be visited.
I think this is a great idea. I can understand enterprises do not mind paying a subscription fee per user to fully control an important piece of software.
This sounds like the type of thing IT would push on us, causing great inconvenience until we found a way to work around it and install the browsers, extensions, and functionality we really need.
Probably a better idea for school kids where it makes sense to lock down their chromebooks. But that market is much smaller than “enterprise” and Google has probably figured it out already there. This just seems like a concept for enterprise that isnt really a solution to anything
Those don’t seem like hard controls for Chrome or Edge to support for businesses if the market demand is there. Companies can already lock chrome down to a decent extent.
It pains me to see good tech all over HN and then get a reminder of where the software market’s focus is at: endlessly regurgitating the same idea (wow, another browser) while adding “enterprise features” that aren’t even features. Also, what is up with the $1B valuation when they just came out of stealth mode? This isn’t deep tech. Do they good profit margins (lol)? Do they even have revenue? I don’t even have to ask…
> For example, the Island browser gives security teams control over simple functionality such as copy-and-paste, screen capture and content downloads.
Are investors really blown away by such "features"? Most people have a webcam near by or a second phone. Surely this can't be the killer feature set which justifies so much investment.
Enterprise Browser is not a new concept, at all. Both Chrome and Edge has Enterprise Browser versions for years, with central control capabilities like these built in and controllable by the enterprise admin. See more here:
Also, keeping a browser software itself secure from all external threats is a very very tall order. Both Google and Microsoft have large teams of security experts and trillions of daily points collected that helps to find and fix security issues in the browser software itself. Not sure one can trust a very early product and nascent software - while copy-paste by employees may have been controlled, the real hackers may not be prevented from exploiting the security issues in complex browser software that Google and Microsoft fix on a daily basis.
This startup will have a very hard time to compete or replace either Chrome or Safari, when enterprises who care about such central controls can turn on such tech within Chrome and Safari itself. Enterprises who would want to silently monitor will simply turn on such control capabilities in common browsers, vs blatantly asking their teams to switch and use a browsers that is only known for such monitoring--- LoL
Is there any reason to think this number is real rather than what the VCs need to turn a profit? A Chromium fork which competes with Google in a core focus of the Chrome team seems like a tough market to be profitable in.
This isn't in competition with Google. It isn't really a "browser". It's an enterprise security app that helps web applications be more secure on end-user devices. The fact that it's implemented on top of Chromium is an "implementation detail".
Security tools is a HUGE market that you can sell to the enterprise. Firefox or Google could do the exact same thing. But they aren't. There's also Talon (another Israeli company that raised a bundle) which does the same thing.
It is a browser, as clearly explained by their own marketing material. They’re trying to build some nice security policies into it but that’s something Google and Microsoft are also doing or have already done — for example, restricting where you can screenshot or copy and paste is a demand in certain fields but neither of those are huge technical hurdles and would be minor extensions to the existing group policies.
I’m aware it’s a large potential market - note that I was asking was why this particular company would be capturing a billion dollar valuation as opposed to their competitors, many of whom are more established and have high-functioning engineering teams.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. It isn't "sold" like a browser is sold. That's not the "product". Technically, yes it's chromium. Sales/profit/product wise. It isn't.
I can hear IT salivating. Cut-and-paste will be disabled and I will have to manually transcribe from StackOverflow.
Like many enterprise things, this will be a lose-lose. Jobs will be harder, but no one will be more secure. No one will even get a bonus for pretending to make something more secure.
I guess that faceless IT group in every company that loves locking things down will get some sort of satisfaction. Not sure if that counts as a win.
As a faceless member of the IT department, we generally only lock something down because someone has found a way to do something really dumb with it.
For copy/paste, I can already tell you: We blocked installing Grammarly because there's no reasonable guarantee of what happens to the sensitive data we are legally obligated not to share, so people copy/paste sensitive data into Grammarly's website. Now we have to block Grammary's website, but I could see someone giving up and taking away pasting into websites as a next step...
More often than not we have a reason for it. I can say I try really hard not to be HR: We tend to look the other way on any activity that isn't a security risk. Though sometimes one can turn into another:
I once ignored someone's attempt to run a game on a PC of ours. Turns out it was a hacked version of a game which had malware injected, and when it got blocked, they tried installing VPNs and Wireshark to try to get around our security methods...
If you have any questions about presumed oppressive IT policies, I'd be happy to give you my take on them. Some folks do indeed go nuts with it, but often I think the reasons why just aren't obvious at first glance.
I know hand waving about customers is a common startup tactic, but if it’s true that they’ve landed a couple prime customers after years of stealth development, then it makes at least some sense:
> Island CEO Michael Fey tells TechCrunch that the investment is a result of “very fortunate” customer demand since it launched in February.
> “Our team has been able to secure business across a wealth of sectors and organization sizes.”
The browser is probably the main attack vector these days. Companies are spending massively to secure their endpoints, but the mouse fingers are difficult to control. I see the value proposition but struggle to see it at this figure when someone else should be able to build the same limitations into another fork. I guess subscription to a service to customize to a company's needs is warranted.
I feel like startups is just a way to do money laundering nowadays. You can say what you want but there is NO way this startup is worth a billion dollars and that this money is actually clean.
Seriously, look at their website: https://www.island.io/
There is not even a SINGLE image of the browser itself, it's just 3D renders, there is no way to test it. At least BREX, Slack and the others are product you can see, it's something that you can know it exists. Even in the use cases for the browser they don't show anything about the browser itself.
This is REALLY disappointing for any entrepreneur working on a REAL product and receiving NO from every single investor they talk to.
I mean: i, a nobody, has a solid product, has paying clients. But because i am not friend of a VC or somebody else i need to listen that my product is not good enough, that it will never scale, that i don't have the right revenue to justify an investment. You can see my product, you can test it if you want. But then a guy comes with something that doesn't even have a proper website and is valuated a billion dollars out of the gate.
It's just sad to see what the startup ecosystem has become.
Most of the world runs on relationships and not necessarily merit. That’s just the reality.
Most people aren’t pointing out that one of this startup’s co-founders was the former President of Symantec and CTO of McAfee [1], two cybersecurity giants.
A resume like that coupled with VCs having too much money chasing few deals, it’s easy to see why this startup is emerging from stealth with hundreds of millions in funding. It’s not “fair”, just what it is…
That is the way the world has always worked. It’s about relationships, not industrial merit.
Sometimes those relationships are sound and the ambitions more honest, and other times they are flaky, dishonest or downright fraudulent. And very dimensional gradient between.
You’ll (almost) never get a leading role in a Hollywood blockbuster off the street after an audition. You will maybe get a smaller part. Why? Relationships.
you might get one, when you are a cheap talent sleeping with the producer. cost cutting. when you don't get an A lister, you can try a talent. happens in most blockbusters
Just because you’re a nobody doesn't mean that somebodies are money laundering.
To expand on that, although being a limited partner is a great way to clean money there is no difference between a small round or a big round in that regard. There is just unlimited money for a limited amount of things.
> For example, the Island browser gives security teams control over simple functionality such as copy-and-paste, screen capture and content downloads. It also places limits on the kinds of extensions that can be installed and the domains that can be visited.
Honestly, the day this landed on my work machine would be the day I turned in my notice.
These "whole new ways about thinking about enterprise work" frequently translate to endless micro-management and requesting permissions from the gods of IT to do what's often very necessary to your job.
It's not really possible to just "turn in your notice" (like someone else suggested) if you get this sort of micromanagey corporate spyware installed – but I would definitely treat it as a negative while looking at and negotiating job offers. Clearly the market for this sort of nonsense is high, so it needs to be addressed via the market.
For folks who are managers or similar, trying to get productive output from a programmer while forcing them to use intrusive corporate spyware is like locking an artist in a cell, putting a camera on them, and saying "Paint the best artwork you can". Please avoid doing this as far as possible.
And to address an immediate reply that often comes up – no, SOC2 doesn't mean you have to do this; simple home-grown software suffices. Yes, we know your compliance audits cost a lot. Believe me, losing a fully-trained software developer also costs a lot in the current market. Find unintrusive, basic software that will satisfy your needs with easy controls for advanced users. The real controls are that you should be able to trust the software developers that are creating ridiculous amounts of value for your company.