They can keep chrome if they open source everything and remove all tracking, telemetry, and calling home of any sort, artificial crippling of addons via manifestV3, stop blocking blockers, stop injecting ads, stop breaking APIs, stop asynchronous and default DNS, stop forcing safebrowsing (URL monitoring).
I still don’t see how a standalone web browser survives financially. It seems like Firefox is always near death and has to make compromising decisions. Do you have any thoughts on how this ought to work?
I think we might have to get used to the idea of paying for software again, if we want to sustain the development of good quality, privacy respecting products
I think it would thrive under a non-profit like the Linux foundation. It doesn't need to make money. It's a critical piece of our tech infrastructure, just like Linux, openssl and other open source projects. Having it in the hands of an ad company whose interests are against the open internet and open standards is not okay.
There's loads of ways you can monetise being the window through which billions of hours of attention are spent every day.
It's not working for Firefox because they just don't have many users any more. I haven't checked recently but it's less than 5% market share or something.
I too want to know more about this.
Also, what happens to all the Chromium based browsers once Google doesn't maintain it?
Edit: I use Firefox and will continue to do so.
This point comes up a lot, but how does Photoshop survive? If chrome were split, Im sure they would find ways to make it work.
Corporate licensing would probably be the #1 way they could survive easily. The general public sees alternatives as "junk" to the main thing when it comes to tech. This, imo, is why Firefox is near death.
Now idk if the licensing route would be better or worse for us.
I’m guessing they would not be interested in keeping Chrome under those conditions. Those are all things that give them leverage, which is the reason they need to split