Have you ever thought about who actually pays to keep your web browser working?
What if that money just... disappeared overnight?
Most people think web browsers like Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox are built by big companies with lots of money to spare and huge developer teams.
Web developers are lead to believe that the reason so much of our front-end code works across various browsers is down to web standards bodies ...
But here's the secret: Google is paying for almost all of it.
and that could be about to change.
Google Is the Wallet Behind the Web
Right now, Google pays more than 80% of the money used to develop the four biggest browsers on the internet.
- Google gives Mozilla (the people behind Firefox) about $450 million every year.
- Apple gets around $18 billion a year from Google to make their search engine the default. Without that financial incentive, will Apple decide their users would benefit from exclusive web features?
- Microsoft Edge is built on Google’s open-source project called Chromium after dumping their own engine.
Even though Microsoft puts their own name on Edge, Google does almost all the coding. In 2024, Google made 94% of the changes to Chromium. That means Google builds the engine, and other browsers just paint over it.
Why the US Government Wants This to Stop
The US Department of Justice says all these deals are unfair. They believe Google is hurting competition by paying so much money to keep its search engine as the default in other browsers.
So they want Google to:
- Stop paying Mozilla and Apple
- Sell Chrome to a different company
- Focus only on search, not browsers
If this happens, it will hit every major browser at the same time.
A Future Without Google Funding
What does that mean for you and me?
- Firefox could lose 83% of its income
- Safari could lose 60% of the budget it gets for research and development
- Edge might lose almost all of its support, since it runs on Google’s tech
All of this could lead to broken updates, fewer security fixes, and slower browsers. It might even make the internet less safe or harder to use.
What Now?
The idea behind the government’s plan is to stop one company from having too much power. But by cutting off Google’s funding, every browser may struggle at once.
Right now, the case is still going through court. Mozilla is fighting back. Apple is defending its deals with Google. But if the US government wins, web development could change overnight.
No matter what happens, we’re all about to learn just how much of our web standards depend on one company’s wallet.