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My guess is Google Chrome spends well over a billion dollars a year and comes up with ridiculous rules like this https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay#medi

My guess is Google Chrome spends well over a billion dollars a year and comes up with ridiculous rules like this https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay#media_engagement_index https://developer.chrome.com/blog/autoplay#media_engagement_... because Google Chrome is Google first and a web browser second. It will collapse under its own weight if Google stops spending billions of dollars on it every year.

hardwaregeek 3y ago
A billion dollars is cheap considering it saves Google from having to pay Apple or Mozilla more money to stay the default search engine. Google gives Apple 10 billion a year just in traffic acquisition payments.
throwaway2037 3y ago
This is an interesting point. Can anyone from the inside estimate the annual budget for Chrome? A billion sounds like a lot. That implies: 1b / 250k = 4,000 (expensive) developers. I guess at least 1,000 well-paid people are involved, so hundreds of millions sounds more likely.
- I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
  Mozilla at least at one point had 1,000 and is and always was chronically underfunded. 4,000 seems about reasonable. Keep in mind it's not 4,000 engineers, it's PMs, managers, UX, Infra, there's a lot more to software development that just line engineers.
- gowld 3y ago
  Google engineers cost closer to $500K/head all in.
- room500 3y ago
  250k is conservative for employee cost. A staff engineer at Google can reach 1 MM total comp. And add in all the overhead a company has (real estate, free food, perks, taxes, etc) 500k-700k is a little more realistic. 1500 employees across all domains (engineering, marketing, product management, customer service, etc) isn’t a huge number
- thanksgiving 3y ago
  There is also advertising and cross promotion. I am also counting the opportunity cost of ads not sold because the spot went to Google Chrome. Disclaimer: I’ve never worked at Google and have no insider information.

hardwaregeek 3y ago

A billion dollars is cheap considering it saves Google from having to pay Apple or Mozilla more money to stay the default search engine. Google gives Apple 10 billion a year just in traffic acquisition payments.

throwaway2037 3y ago

This is an interesting point. Can anyone from the inside estimate the annual budget for Chrome? A billion sounds like a lot. That implies: 1b / 250k = 4,000 (expensive) developers. I guess at least 1,000 well-paid people are involved, so hundreds of millions sounds more likely.

I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
Mozilla at least at one point had 1,000 and is and always was chronically underfunded. 4,000 seems about reasonable. Keep in mind it's not 4,000 engineers, it's PMs, managers, UX, Infra, there's a lot more to software development that just line engineers.
gowld 3y ago
Google engineers cost closer to $500K/head all in.
room500 3y ago
250k is conservative for employee cost. A staff engineer at Google can reach 1 MM total comp. And add in all the overhead a company has (real estate, free food, perks, taxes, etc) 500k-700k is a little more realistic. 1500 employees across all domains (engineering, marketing, product management, customer service, etc) isn’t a huge number
thanksgiving 3y ago
There is also advertising and cross promotion. I am also counting the opportunity cost of ads not sold because the spot went to Google Chrome. Disclaimer: I’ve never worked at Google and have no insider information.