And WebKit didn’t start from scratch either, it started from khtml.
A few years ago there used to be 4 active browser lineages, now there are just 2.
The Mozilla team didn’t intend Servo to be a fully functional new browser. The project was amazing as a Rust-only implementation of the basics of a browser. But ultimately, the utility of Servo was that it served as a place to rewrite modules into Rust for use in Firefox.
Incidentally, there were some good talks by the Firefox team about how they chose to select which modules to rewrite in Rust (since a complete rewrite with feature parity is prohibitively expensive).
This is not accurate. Some parts of Mozilla thought that way, other parts didn't. And thoughts changed over time. For years Servo was officially an experiment, with many possible futures.
Had it succeeded in rendering the modern Web well enough, I think it could have become a fully functional new browser. Sadly, that didn't happen.
(source: I was at Mozilla at the time, and adjacent to the Servo people, who I talked to a lot)
Not even Google started from scratch. They started from WebKit and used their billions to overhaul, maintain and change everything from the engine to the renderer.
> But maybe you don't even need to build another Chromium.
That's what Servo said years ago. I don't see the progress or hype around that anymore.
Maybe Ladybird is different, but overall I'm very skeptical; but an alternative browser that is not Firefox, Chrome or Safari needs a high multi-person and project contribution for it to work.