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Who is going to provide a competitive browser for the price of $0 other than Google?

Before Google, there were multiple competing browsers based on different technology, all of which were either offered for free or explicitly licensed as FOSS. Google used Chrome to put the web on an upgrade treadmill. The only way to keep your own code up-to-date with what websites expected was to either commit unending amounts of resources to the problem (Google), do the bare minimum to keep websites working as your resources are stretched thin (Safari, arguably Firefox), or just ship modified versions of Chrome so that it's easier to merge in new features (Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc).

Before Google, all of those options sucked. Chrome was a breath of fresh air, which was why it exploded in popularity.

I don't do web dev, but from what I've heard, web devs also suffered trying to support multiple conflicting browsers, and Chrome's dominance actually makes life much easier.

Microsoft could end up buying it

And do what with it? They already are using Chromium for Edge. They would still need to monetize it.

A far worse monopoly than Google is going to solve your monopoly problem?

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