[est31]

> Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can always be forked.

It takes more to maintain a Chromium competitor than its source code. You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.

If Google decided to close the source code in 2030, nobody would be able to do anything about it. Mozilla would have laid off its last engineers by 2025 and they'd have found new jobs by now, having 5 year old outdated knowledge about how browsers work. Even if you have engineers with the required knowledge, you still need to organize them, etc. All of this takes time, and gigantic investments.

[rubber_duck]

> nobody would be able to do anything about it.

Microsoft is using Blink for Edge and is upstreaming changes, I recently read about a power usage optimisation coming from Microsoft.

I sort of agree with parent poster, if this was their plan then Mozilla could have given up on Gecko and focused on a privacy focused Blink/V8 based browser. There isn't much value in developing Gecko at this point, they canned Servo and a large chunk of the dev team so I don't see where the technical innovation is going to come from. V8 has won as well, Node uses it, it's ported all over the place.

Their only value right now (after firing so much of the R&D and dev focused engineering talent) is the privacy/open reputation of being released by a non-profit, why not scrap the area you aren't competitive in and focus on your strengths. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced a blink/chromium based browser soon.

[Someone]

Because of its heritage (it’s a fork of WebKit, and thus started out as KHTML, which is LGPL licensed), I don’t think the Chromium code can be closed easily.

They probably can split it and gradually replace most real functionality into a separate closed source part, like they did with Android, but that will take time.

[criddell]

> You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.

What kind of things are rapidly changing these days?

[jlokier]

JavaScript itself (ES language changes), APIs callable from JavaScript (there are a lot), CSS, HTTP(s)/TLS and evolving security, ever-evolving compatibility requirements to keep popular pages working, performance expectations of the rendering model (what must be smooth nowadays didn't used to be and it's expected by sites), things like WASM, WebGL (new version on its) & WebGPU, the sandbox, evolving security patterns (HTML/HTTP/JS security model is complex) and dealing with new security issues (it never stops), compatibility with OS version releases (always new issues), compatibility with GPU drivers (always new issues), video codecs.

These things by themselves require a well-funded team to keep the browser relevant to modern sites. Well-funded because they take a lot of time and ideally to be done to a professional standard. The number of spare-time or independently-wealthy volunteers around to do the work seems thoroughly insufficent compared with what it would take to keep up.

That list doesn't even have new user-visible features (so nothing to "sell" to users except "we still work with current sites").

They are just moving-target "basics", minimal expectations by users and sites to remain "current" on the web. I'm sure I've left off a lot too, it's just off the top of my head.