Becoming a separate for-profit company (as opposed to a nonprofit like Mozilla) could result in some really bad things. Chrome-the-company would have to find new sources of revenue; in the process, it would likely increase its tracking, and it might end up selling info to companies other than Google, which at least tends to hoard user data internally. It may also develop even more industry partnerships around things like DRM that aren't in the interest of users.
If Chrome could somehow be forcefully split off into a decently funded nonprofit, I'd be all for it. I'm not sure that anyone but Google could make that happen, though.
By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle...
> By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle...
However, a Chrome-with-Google-revenue would be far more independent of Google than Chrome-the-Google-Subsidiary. Mozilla/Firefox has shown that it's still possible to advance privacy even within such an arrangement.
Also, its far from clear who would have the most power in such an arrangement. Without a popular browser of its own, Google will be forced to pay the browser vendors to stay the default, unless it wants to give a search engine competitor a chance to unseat it.
It only seems like Mozilla is independent because they are the most independent - a truly independent browser would probably do something shocking, like bundling adblock.
Independence comes in degrees, and I'm not convinced a "truly independent" browser would by truly better for consumers. It'd need a revenue model, and its not clear to me what that would be besides bundling with a paid product or displaying banner and text ads.
Essentially Mozilla is selling ads, but only to one advertiser (Google) which is easy to disable.
Only in the same way that Gmail and Android are "subsidized" by Google. They're sources of data and play directly into how they generate revenue.
I agree that without those motivations it would be hard to fund these projects without them going paid or taking donations, but I take issue with calling them "subsidized".
If Chrome could somehow be forcefully split off into a decently funded nonprofit, I'd be all for it. I'm not sure that anyone but Google could make that happen, though.