The reason Firefox still exists is that Google can prove it’s not a Chrome monopoly. Now this is just me forming conspiracy theories, but I do believe that Google would stop these payments the day Firefox would really out-innovate Chrome and get more market share.

I don’t know about that. One of the big reasons chrome even got off the ground when it started was that it had the reach and backing of Google. If you opened Google, you had a “Get Chrome”. If you did a search on Google, you had a “Get Chrome”. You had advertisements, etc. It being faster to start with was nice, but even then, the other browsers at the time caught up pretty quickly.

Without that help, Firefox might just get left in the dust. We’ve already been at the point where websites are mainly designed for Chromium browsers, and that you’re encouraged to fire it up if something doesn’t work for you, and you’re using Firefox, Safari, Konqueror, etc, since the majority of users use some form of Chrome.

Microsoft couldn’t hack it when they tried developing their own browser, and they’re both much larger than Mozilla, have the reach of Windows, and whatever was left over from IE. They ended up switching over to Blink/Chromium.

I can’t imagine Mozilla would fare any better, after losing a decent chunk of their funding. The fact that they’ve done decently so far is a minor miracle in and of itself.