Island is among the fastest companies to reach unicorn status

> “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.

> 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.

Edit: typo

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.

Wonder how long it will take until Google copies these features for Chrome Enterprise. Just like they did with Google Calendar and Clockwise.

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:

1- Chrome Enterprise: https://chromeenterprise.google/security/ 2- Edge Enterprise: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/ms-edge-security...

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.

Copy-and-paste is disabled? Let me just take a screenshot.

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.

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.

Its hard to find ppl that know how to work securely, so we create tools to make work of security oblivious ppl more secure.

I opened this wondering if it was a retrospective assessment of the famous record label.

But no, it's a new company using the same name.

So... an adblocker and client-side certificates? Please at least add the client-side certificates.

so this looks like two engineers weeks, and 3 man years for cooperate/media. evaluation checks out.

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.

> 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.