Last week, Atlassian, the SaaS company that owns such products as Jira, Confluence, and Trello announced that it would be purchasing The Browser Company, whose products are Arc and now the Dia browser for $610 million in cash, and would remain independent of the parent company (which normally doesn’t last for long). It’s notable on top of the news that in an about face for an antitrust ruling, a judge ruled that Google would not have to divest itself of Chrome as a potential monopolistic remedy.

We’ve seen the term “agentic” thrown around a lot, so here’s how IBM defines it:

Unlike traditional AI models, which operate within predefined constraints and require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits autonomy, goal-driven behavior and adaptability. The term “agentic” refers to these models’ agency, or, their capacity to act independently and purposefully.

Browsers are big deals once again, after becoming stale in innovation when adding in the great AI experiment. Perplexity unveiled its Comet browser which is an AI first product not too long ago as well. This is all about agentics, the current and next phase of GenAI products and business verticals. Google has already integrated Gemini into Chrome, Microsoft integrates Copilot into Edge, and so on. This is only the start of this new phase.

No longer does a user browse the web to find information. These agents can act on your behalf to be more productive and attempt to increase productivity. They are able to complete tasks on the user’s behalf such as keeping track of a target price of a consumer product, then venturing out to purchase it when it gets into a defined range utilizing various hooks or APIs where agent to agent communication takes place.

TechTarget lists some business use cases for this tool. One of them I want to highlight is call centers, for example:

AI agents in call centers orchestrate intelligence and automation across the multiple activities involved in serving customers, Brown explained. An agent might simultaneously analyze customer sentiment, review order history, access company policies and respond to customer needs based on those elements.

Using this example, we might see why Atlassian was interested in such an agentic browser product – streamlining its products into an enterprise tool that can work across workstreams, departmental silos, and from a business retention standpoint (lock-in) to their products so it’s harder for a business to migrate to competing tools.

Multiagent use cases can also work on behalf of the consumer. Tools exist today where users can check for the best prices and get alerts on flights, hotel, rental cars, durable goods, etc… The next stage will be these agents going out (on your behalf) to other agents to make a purchase and have it automatically book these travel criterias.

There should be a saying, “have my agents talk to your agents”, and we wouldn’t be far off of where the next phase of GenAI will lead us. Everything from SEO, marketing, and human interaction will change as a result and will have to adapt to these circumstances, as they have with any new implementation or evolution of technology.