Comment by lesuorac
5 days ago
> A lot of discussion in this thread is pointing out that chromium is a thing and that it would be hard for a company to properly fund a web browser without the backing of a tech giant whose more direct revenue stream is elsewhere.
This is not an issue though is it?
Like all those magazine subscriptions make their money off ads. The idea that a business can't survive on its own is fine, no?
If it's a singular tech giant then that's a problem but if chrome had contracts with like a dozen+ companies then it sounds really sustainable.
> Like all those magazine subscriptions make their money off ads. The idea that a business can't survive on its own is fine, no?
This is not quite the same, if a single magazine starts to become more ads than decent content it is not insurmountable for another company to start a competitor. It's not ad income itself that is bad, it's that in the case of a web browser it is insurmountable for a company to start up a competitor from scratch. It wasn't always the case, but because google has dumped so much engineering in to chrome they've effectively pulled up the ladder behind them.