Browser development depends on Google's search money — what the DOJ might break if that money stops flowing
Most of the world's browsers rely on Google in one way or another. Many utilize Google's open-source browser project, Chromium, as their foundation, while others depend on Google as their primary source of income.
For instance, Google pays Mozilla Firefox and Safari to be the default search engine on those browsers. Interestingly, these two are among the few significant browsers not built on Chromium. This means Firefox's development is closely tied to Google's annual payments, which constitute a significant portion of their revenue. Safari, on the other hand, might withstand the loss of Google's support, as Apple has the resources to fund its browser independently.
Google pays them how much?!
In 2022, court documents revealed that Apple received 36% of the total revenue Google earns from searches conducted in Safari, amounting to $20 billion. For Mozilla, they received $555 million from Google in 2023, which accounted for approximately 85% of their revenue.
There might be more browsers receiving money from Google to use it as their default search engine. An NBC Bay Area article adds Opera and UCWeb to that list.
What could happen next?
If most browsers rely on Google's search ad revenue as their main source of income, losing that support could severely impact their ability to fund development. In that case, we might be left with just a few active browsers: Chrome, Safari, and maybe Brave, which is trying to escape the traditional browser business model by operating its own search engine and earning money through Brave Ads and crypto integrations.
With recent news about the DOJ aiming to prevent Google from paying other browsers and even considering forcing Google to sell off Chrome, this scenario could quickly become reality. It might also lead Google to abandon the open-source Chromium project, which many modern browsers depend on.
Hope with open source
I was introduced to all of this recently while trying to find open-source alternatives to Chromium, which led me to Ladybird, an open-source browser not based on Chromium that’s currently in development and is solely sustained by contributions from the dev community and donations.
Things like this give me hope that more projects like this will emerge, not only in the browser space, but for AI and others, and hopefully they’ll win!