Comment by utopiah

I'm not sure, maybe the architecture itself is what matters. I'm thinking about the Linux kernel. Nobody, not even large companies, might be able to handle it, but each focuses on their own driver, some on specific parts, maybe it's manageable. So Chromium itself is too large but I'm not sure if the size of the team is the main criterium. There are other browsers (in fact I even have https://browser.engineering on my desk and I wrote my own toy browser) so I'm wondering what indeed makes a project manageable. Maybe its the expectations that make it impossible to handle and that it is used strategically, both in Android or Chromium, to make sure nobody else indeed can keep pace.