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Comment by efficax | Hacker News Reader

i don’t disagree that google needs to be broken up but in do wonder how chrome development will be funded when the google ad cash hose is shut off

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> chrome development

I might be ignorant here, but what development? Wasn't Chrome a done product years ago? It seems to me that the powers that be just keep on stuffing more and more nonsense into it for the sole purpose of making it harder, nay impossible, for anyone to compete.

Linux and Debian, just to name a few, which are way more complicated than Chrome. Chrome or Chromium will easily survive past Google demise.

Are they more complicated? The Linux kernel, maybe, although I'd like to see a citation for this because I'm not 100% convinced. Debian? No way. Maybe Debian and all the packages that make up a default install, but most of that isn't Debian so I don't think that's an apples to apples comparison.

Does it really need Google-sized investments though? I know it's a lot but if Google is willing to give it for free(tm), then it's a error mark in their budget which tells me other more focused entitities would have no trouble continuing development (e.g. Brave is a fork, right)?

I don't think Brave are doing substantial Chromium development. They turn off a bunch of features, in their fork, but I don't think many changes are flowing back upstream, they're mostly focused on the Browser UX layer than the Engine layer, much like Arc, and arguably Edge (although I think Edge does contribute some back).

IMHO browsers are nearly feature complete.

I doubt that's a problem. What would Google pay to be the default search engine in an independent Chrome?

Many companies use the web as their main distribution platform, so I don't think that would be an issue.

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