[guidovranken]

Developing a modern feature-rich browser is a gargantuan task and you need many skilled (expensive) developers to work on it; easily millions of USD yearly in salaries alone. Some donations here and there won't cut it, you basically need FAANG money to do it. Additionally, at least the last time I checked, Mozilla has made it impossible to donate to Firefox development; donations go to their activism branch, not browser dev [1]. In 2020 they also fired 25% of their work force [2]. They'll probably sunset the product altogether within a few years and that leaves us with an ever-greater market share of Chrome and derivatives, and from here on out it's hard to conceive of a viable strategy to develop an independent browser. Maybe a government or EU could do it, but that comes with its own set of problems.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...