It's open source. You're free to base your own browser on Chromium.

Then it's not much of a competition. It's just more chrome market share, with a different name.

Open source is what you make of it. If you have no plans to change Chromium, then sure, "It's just more chrome market share".

I would argue that you probably shouldn't be making a web browser unless you have plans to change the status quo for web browsers.

That's the difference between theory and practice.

In theory, sure.

In practice, there are lany chrome forks and they all chrome with a few features on top.

In theory you can beat usain bolt by just running faster than him.

In practice nobody does.

in practice it's just chrome and firefox, just like it was america and the soviets.

it's irrelevant what flag your fork (nation state) flies when its marching orders come from above.

This comment is like saying that all Unreal Engine 5 games are the same game just with different names. This is not the case. The engine is what powers and helps you build the product you want. 2 different companies can use the same engine and have their end products compete against each other.

But if you fork it you cannot paid that amount to keep it bug "free".

You can merge in the paid for fixes though. Depends how divergent you want to be.

This seems like a tiny amount given the importantance of Chrome. Surely it would be rational for Google to pay 10x higher bounties?

These are just the bounties. I am sure the total compensation for Google's in-house security team is larger than this amount.

> nobody else is able to compete. The money supply is infinite

Apple and Microsoft would both consider $10m a rounding error

Apple could but they don’t want

Eh? Apple do want, I'm not sure what you're basing your claim off of; https://security.apple.com/blog/apple-security-bounty-upgrad... says they paid out $20 million in bug bounties in the 2.5 years before that post was made.

I meant the competition to Chrome

On iOS they are winning :-)

Apple will have to. If EU forces browser choice to iOS, there is a considerable possibility of the last bastion of browser diversity to be lost.

I know, it's kind of hilarious considering Apple, but it's chrome 70%, Safari 20% and the rest is various Chrome-based browsers (e.g. Edge) and Firefox with 3.35%.

So Apple has a choice of losing control of the most important app or improving their product, so there is no reason to switch. I am pretty sure they love control more than anything.

That's nothing compared to the amount they spend in employee salaries for folks working on chrome.

one is hard to receive, the other any internet entity with a bank account can acquire

That is also a reason why big companies like Google finally have started doing the math how much it costs to keep developing in C and C++.