The inherent problem with creating a new browser/platform is getting people to create addons/extensions for it.
If you don’t think Google could do this, think again. Google has an iron grip on the Chromium project.
From the beginning of its time with Google, Android was touted as THE open-source phone operating system. The Android Open Source Project was used by several projects to create their own version of Android.
Then at a certain point, Google introduced an app called Google Play Services. This app is not open source and contains all of the stuff you need to access Google’s services.
This is a problem I see in privacy circles a lot. Yes, Mozilla definitely has a lot of problems, but people immediately start saying that it’s just as bad as Google and/or that you should use a Firefox version that’s entirely forked and not dependent on the upstream Mozilla repo or something.
IMO, at most use Fennec F-droid and IceCat (which still rely on the upstream Mozilla code) if you can’t stand Mozilla, but to say that they’re just as bad as Google is just wrong.
You can use Pale Moon or Basilisk based browsers that are developed independently. Only in security backports things from Mozilla Firefox but it is not dependent on it and it is only to make implementation faster.
They are not close to Google but they are still doing pretty shady shit:
I mentioned Widevine in the article. They came out and said they don’t support open source.
I’m a bit on the fence regarding WideVine. It is important to keep everything open, but broad adoption is also important. Not implementing DRM would make Firefox unusable for many users.