Both Chromium (used for chrome, edge, brave, etc.) and Firefox are open source. They can be forked and many people/companies do that. And even Safari is based o

Both Chromium (used for chrome, edge, brave, etc.) and Firefox are open source. They can be forked and many people/companies do that. And even Safari is based on Webkit (a fork of KHTML). And Webkit continues to be open source and provides a more or less complete browser engine that can be adapted for use in other browsers (and has been). There are a few other browser engines out there but most of them don't register in usage statistics as anywhere near significant. Fractions of a percent market share basically. But most of those are also open source. So, the good news is that essentially all browsers are mostly based on open source code bases. Those aren't going to go away. The difference between the top three and those other engines: Google funding. Google pays for access to the user via search and advertising. And for influence over standardization. Because you don't bite the hand that feeds you. What happens if that flow of money stops is going to be interesting. I think there are probably going to be many companies, users and developers interested in seeing development of the thing they use, depend on, or work on every day continue. And it opens up the doors for other companies with commercial interests on the web to step up and sponsor some of this stuff. Companies paying for developers is how development for a lot of widely used OSS software works after all. I'm not too worried about all this grinding to a halt just because Google is forced to stop trying to own and control all browser development and related standardization. And people forget that especially Chromium and Mozilla get a lot of external contributions to their source code from developers that aren't paid by Google. I think it wouldn't be bad for some fresh blood in this space. Including fresh funding from other companies. Apple and MS would probably step up their funding. They have plenty of vested interest and the means to do so. As do many other companies that depend on the web for their revenue. There's plenty of money out there that hasn't been tapped into simply because Google was paying all the bills. More diverse financing will make the web more robust. It also means a more diverse set of commercial interests. And a more level playing field. Maybe there's more than just advertisement driven click bait to be had. Even Mozilla might finally stumble on a more sustainable business model than just taking Google money and wasting it mostly on things that don't matter to browser users.