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by BearOso 218 days ago
The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.

People in the organization are trying to use what's left of the name recognition and all that money to benefit their own initiatives.
2 comments
pseudalopex 218 days ago
> The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.

You under estimated the work to develop a web browser. Vivaldi are 60 people.[1] They produce an unstable Chromium fork and email program. They couldn't commit to keep uBlock Origin working.

[1] https://vivaldi.com/team/

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BearOso 217 days ago
That's a good example. I'm probably significantly underestimating the amount of people needed. $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.
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pseudalopex 214 days ago
> $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.

$250,000 is conservative for the total cost to employ a software engineer in the US. And their expenses are not limited to software engineer salaries of course.

A fair question would be what Google or Apple spend to produce their web browsers. The answers are secrets. $1 billion is a common Chrome development cost estimate in my experience.

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glenstein 218 days ago
What would you say is the most costly initiative that's siphoning money away from core browser development right now?
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BearOso 217 days ago
Good question. Looking at their expenses, though, it seems to be just a plethora of piddly donations. $1M here and there, and it adds up. That does fit with the lack of focus narrative.
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