Comment by ndriscoll

Right, and that's why ad and spying funded products should be illegal. They don't just distort but destroy markets. It's an extremely unfair business practice.

That people claim it's impossible for a browser to survive without Google's funding demonstrates how broken the market is by ad money: of course people would pay for something like a web browser if it were illegal to make money by selling your users. The web is obviously valuable to people.