[dnissley]

The revenue and profitability of "the Chrome Company" is going to be far less than Google, since Google's rising tide is what lifted that particular boat.

How would the Chrome Company deal with this?

Would they do closed source development going forward, no more free lunch for other browsers or shells using Chrome as an engine?

How much of a hit does this mean for employees salaries? They are currently making Google money, and now they're about to make Microsoft money.

How many would just be flat out laid off due to a lack of revenue, at least in the short term? Would it be a 50% lay off? Into a job market that's already bad?

[throwawaythekey]

Firefox makes hundred of millions of dollars in revenue per year. If you assume the same revenue per user and apply it to Chrome's market size (about 30x that of firefox) then you have a top 20(?) tech company in revenue terms.

They will have more money than they know what to do with. But yes, going closed source does seem more likely.

[sidibe]

Isn't firefox mostly making its money from Google? They'll be struggling too if Google gets out of the browser business and no longer feels the pressure to sustain them

[ric2b]

Google doesn't fund Mozilla because it is in the browser market, it does it so it can keep the search engine dominance.

Google also pays Apple for the same reason.

Now it would probably be paying the Chrome company as well.