> Chrome at least would never be viable as a standalone product (as the fates of Mozilla and Opera have taught us).

Firefox has been viable as a standalone product for over a decade because Google pays for being the default search engine. This is roughly viable with Chrome being around, it would be even more viable if Chrome was not around.

And Google pays far more to Apple because they have more users. This would probably be dwarfed by what they'd pay to a hypothetical independent Chromium Inc. that develops the browser.

Hard to say -- In Apple's case, there are so many potential users it's worth Google's money to get their search engine as the default.

However, Mozilla doesn't have a massive userbase like that, which leads me to suspect that Google only pays Mozilla to stave off pressure form regulators who would otherwise accuse them of having a monopoly on browsers.

If chrome didn't exist, I'd say that it's more likely than not that Firefox would have the majority of windows uses...

Mozilla and Opera aren't viable because of Chrome. Chrome is arguably more polished because Google pours more money into its development, more readily available because Google can lobby/buy/enforce its inclusion as the default browser, and free because Google makes money from the information it collects through it.

You can't compete with Chrome when your primary merit is simply not being Google. Forcing Google to spin-off Chrome should have been done earlier though, before Microsoft had a stake on the engine. Now additional steps need to be taken to ensure that spinning off Chrome will not actually kill competition; with an independent Chrome, we can count on Google cutting down on Mozilla's funding since Google wouldn't be any longer in danger of being ruled as a browser monopoly.

>Totally agree that Match group is an interesting under-the-radar one. It's shocking how much of the market they control with all their "competing" apps.

I wonder if this means that we should all start starting dating app companies, given that apparently it's a guaranteed sale if you can attract enough users. We could start the "match group group," stamping out standardized dating apps and putting proven amounts of brand-building effort into each one, and selling them to Match Group at a repeatable price.

You can't draw any conclusions about Chrome based on Moz and Opera, because it was the reason the other two could not survive.

Interesting thought -- but IIRC, before Chrome, Firefox was already facing an uphill battle, since most people just tended to use the browser bundled with their OS. I mostly remember only tech savvy people tending to download Firefox back in those days.

Yeah, I used internet explorer until chrome. People said firefox was so much better than internet explorer, but they always felt comparable to me and I'm not a person who just switches because others tells me to. Chrome however really felt different, I switched to it when it was just a beta and had less site compatibility simply because I liked it so much more.

Depends on your location. In 2010 Firefox had 60% market share in Germany.

Firefox usage was slowly but steadily increasing pre-chrome though.

Mozilla is still around, though?

For now...