But putting in the work to maintain a Chromium fork whose engine significantly differs from upstream? Especially over time as more changes are made that you'll want to remove, and new features you DO want rely on some you DON'T....

Takes a lot of dev time/money.

Realistically other than Microsoft I don't think any of the alternative Chromium browsers have the resources.

And most users are going to be on a browser fully confirming to pretty much all engine changes Google makes.

In reality, the larger Chromium's market share - the bigger Google's iron fist on web development.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

Just because nobody else wants to do the work Google is doing, that doesn't mean Google controls it. It just means people who have a lot more skin in the game than you do have looked at the situation and decided that making use of Google's work is the best way for them to achieve their goals.