Who is going to pay them?

"Nobody" would be a better situation than we have now.

(Microsoft and Brave both depend on Chrome, however.)

*Chromium

Identical code, different name. I think chromium will even side load the closed source DRM module the first chance it gets.

Firefox did well enough until chrome came along. It even managed to keep up until the recent downsizing. In other words your comment only makes sense if you just woke up from a thirty year long coma.

It did well enough until there was real competition? Firefox is only alive from fat Google Search checks. It’s a great example of a massive failure in this charity business model.

Given that Microsoft almost killed the entire browser industry just by releasing IE it is quite a success to be around decades later.

> It did well enough until there was real competition

"Real" competition doesn't have to artificially cripple high profile sites to compete. The chrome style of competition gave us ShadowDom v0 on youtube, disappearing features in maps and gmail, empty html elements that only seemed to be there to prevent Edge from accelerating video playback and constant popups reminding users to "upgrade" to Chrome.

Corporate users.