BrowserStack captures Bird Eats Bug to launch manual testing tool

Nitesh Arora, CEO and co-founder of BrowserStack
Nitesh Arora, CEO and co-founder of BrowserStack

US software testing provider BrowserStack confirmed it has reached a deal to buy Bird Eats Bug, a bug reporting platform based in Berlin.

BrowserStack confirmed plans to integrate Bird Eats Bug’s capabilities into its existing QA ecosystem, culminating in the launch of Bug Capture, a new solution for manual testing.

“This acquisition not only aligns with BrowserStack’s vision of creating a developer-first end-to-end test platform but also underscores its urgent need to resolve gaps in bug-reporting processes and eliminate fragmented toolchains in testing,” stressed Ritesh Arora, CEO and co-founder of BrowserStack.

“This acquisition marks a significant step towards our goal of providing developer and QA teams with a unified, seamless testing experience,” Arora added.

He went on to say that “by integrating Bug Capture’s approach to bug reporting into our platform, we’re not just streamlining workflows; we’re boosting development teams’ productivity so they can focus more on building great products and less on managing the intricacies of the testing process.”

Current software development suffers from inefficiencies in bug-reporting processes. Bug Capture allows teams to debug issues 30% faster on average, Arora claimed.

When asked to discuss the tool, he said the key features include instant replays, screen recording, and auto-captured technical logs, such as console and network logs, system details, and steps to reproduce, “all consolidated into one clean bug report.”

“These features work in harmony to eliminate the need for extensive back-and-forth between testers, product managers, developers, support teams, and customers,” Arora noted.

Buying spree

BrowserStack is a web and mobile testing tech provider that is venture capital-backed and was recently valued at around $4 billion. Among its prominent financial services clients are Wells Fargo, Capital One, Stripe and Mastercard.

The firm, which has profitable since its inception, rapidly expanded its product portfolio in recent years, to include over 15 products, with ten alone launching in the last 18 months.

Bird Eats Bug marks BrowserStack’s fifth acquisition since Percy, a visual testing platform, in 2020.

Responding to the takeover announcement, Dan Makarov, co-founder and CEO of Bird Eats Bug, which raised close to $2 million from Nauta Capital in January, said he is “truly excited”.

He stressed “it’s hard to think of two products that would be a better fit. My co-founder, Jacky Chung, and I have been highly impressed by the quality of the team and their ambitious vision for Bird.”

Legal woes

Despite the rapid expansion, one of BrowserStack’s main rivals, software test equipment provider Deque Systems, recently filed a lawsuit against BrowserStack in the U.S. over the use of one of its testing platforms.

Deque Systems reportedly alleges that BrowserStack acquired Deque’s proprietary testing platform DevTools, only for it to be taken apart and directly access its codes.

The codes, as Deque Systems claims, were then duplicated in order to develop BrowserStack’s own testing tool, which was subsequently launched and brought to market by BrowserStack at the end of last year.

“When we looked at the extent of the copying, the theft was intentional, pervasive, blatant and frankly, really shameless,” clarified Preety Kumar, the CEO and founder of Deque Systems, in a statement in March.

“So they even use their work emails, with ‘browserstack.com’ when they signed up for our trials [so] we have decided that we’re going to have to vigorously defend our intellectual property rights,” Kumar said.


““The theft was intentional, pervasive, blatant and frankly, really shameless.”

– Preety Kumar

Deque Systems develops accessibility software and testing tools and is used by a range of large U.S. banks, including PNC Financial services and U.S. Bancorp.

Kumar said Deque Systems spent more than five years developing the testing platform. She stressed designing efforts evolved around ensuring that the product remains usable for novice users and still be compatible with algorithms at the backend.

“Some of the questions that are in BrowserStack’s product are verbatim stolen questions from our product, as well as in addition to some of the code that they saw,” Kumar claimed.

At the time BrowserStack allegedly signed up “for hundreds of accounts”, as she put it, Deque Systems’ product was in beta first.

When Deque subsequently launched the software product, it drastically limited the option to use it during a free trial.

It was then however, according to Kumar, that BrowserStack attempted to sign up for a subscription with a generic email like “test@browserstack.com”.

Deque objected since such a generic email meant the account would be open to many multiple users. In response, BrowserStack acquired a range of subscriptions from Deque Systems, which allowed them access to the entire product.

Kumar stressed it is the first time ever Deque Systems has filed such a large lawsuit.

She expects more information to come out as the litigation continues regarding how BrowserStack is allegedly “poaching” Deque Systems’ customers by claiming its product is much better than Kumar’s firm.

She is convinced that the best outcome of any lawsuit would be for BrowserStack to end all its alleged illegal activities and compensate Deque Systems accordingly.

“Right the wrong, stop stealing and selling things based on what you have stolen from us and pay for the damages,” Kumar concluded.

When approached by QA Financial, BrowserStack declined to comment.


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