Every major tech company has a stake in chromium. Google could die tomorrow, and someone would bankroll it for their own selfish use.
That really isn’t how it works.
Every major company has a stake in Chromium because the company that prints money out of the aether maintains it. Throwing a few bucks Chromium’s way for publicity is MUCH cheaper than hiring qualified developers to build and maintain their own browsers. Chromium is so successful that Google outright funds a good chunk of Mozilla just so nobody can say they have a monopoly.
Google no longer backing Chromium wouldn’t be the immediate death of the project. But it would mean the end of professional support as the vast majority of downstream companies MIGHT hire some staff to work on their own internal forks. But they aren’t going to be paying people to add new features (for good or for ill) to the upstream.
That really isn’t how it works.
Every major company has a stake in Chromium because the company that prints money out of the aether maintains it. Throwing a few bucks Chromium’s way for publicity is MUCH cheaper than hiring qualified developers to build and maintain their own browsers. Chromium is so successful that Google outright funds a good chunk of Mozilla just so nobody can say they have a monopoly.
Google no longer backing Chromium wouldn’t be the immediate death of the project. But it would mean the end of professional support as the vast majority of downstream companies MIGHT hire some staff to work on their own internal forks. But they aren’t going to be paying people to add new features (for good or for ill) to the upstream.