[wvh]

How much effort do Chrome and Android require from a company the size of Google? It's a genuine question.

Jolla/Sailfish make a mobile operating system with a handful of people, and even though that system pretty minimal, I'd say the added value on the Android side is the ecosystem of apps and porting to devices, which is done by other developers and manufacturers than Google. And I'm not sure how many people work on Firefox itself on any given day.

I guess it's just really hard to get a clear picture on what all those people in large companies are really doing day to day. The overhead must be enormous, and likely a lot of engineering effort is thrown at the wall to see what sticks.

[lolinder]

> Jolla/Sailfish make a mobile operating system with a handful of people

My biggest question is how long they can stay at a handful if they become popular. The increased burden of security patches alone would likely turn that handful into a small army.

Security through obscurity is often mocked (for good reason), but it actually does work in cases like this as long as you don't reach Android's scale.

[lupusreal]

I wonder what percentage of the workforce Google has working on Android is dedicated to fixing security issues. Probably a sizable minority... Maybe one in ten? I'd love to know the real numbers.