Depends on what you mean by "pay-to-play". Google's business model was to take FLOSS software, ostensibly make it work without them being involved, but make it

Depends on what you mean by "pay-to-play". Google's business model was to take FLOSS software, ostensibly make it work without them being involved, but make it obvious that if you wanted things to be as simple as possible, you needed to use their version of it. Can you use Chromium as your daily driver? Sure, but it's not as simple as just using Chrome. Android is even more like this. And of course, the simplest way to use this software also just happens to give Google a ton of your data, which enabled them as an ad-serving company. They wouldn't have given the browser away for free if they weren't making at least the cost of the browser development back in the take from ad revenues. I guess you could argue that the moves to buy services like YouTube and other big pillars of the web and have that reflected in Chrome development cost money.