@freakazoid I think there are a couple of reasoning errors in there, to be honest. Going one by one:

"But my real point is that I don't think the problem of Google's dominance over the Internet can be solved by another browser if that browser's goals are substantially the same as Firefox's, if that makes any sense."

It can't, but that's also not the goal - there *is* no instant solution to Google's dominance. The purpose of such a project would be to weaken Google's grip on the web, to remove a major point of control. More work is needed beyond that point to actually get rid of Google, it's just a destabilizer.

"You end up having to play constant catch-up, either because you're having to keep changing your own rendering engine or because you have to keep incorporating upstream changes into the one you're built on."

Yes and no. This is true as long as you are the underdog. "Maintaining compatibility until you can afford not to" is a strategy that works for monopolists, but it also works for those trying to dethrone them. Notably, diverse community projects are generally better at keeping up with such complexity than centralized organizations are; this is a point we have an advantage on.

"And if Mozilla can't manage more than a miniscule market share even with its millions in revenue, how is another browser?"

This is is a very complex question to answer in full, but the short answer boils down to: Mozilla is not representative of all that exists, let alone all that can exist.

They are a singular organization, born from unique circumstances, with a single decisionmaking hierarchy, and a particular style of management. There is no reason to believe that *any* of their outcomes are automatically applicable to anyone else.

The argument here is effectively "if this one group of people couldn't do it, how could anyone else?" and that is just not how feasibility assessment works - what matters is *why* it is not working for Mozilla, and that starts with their poor management structure.

"I just think another browser can't have enough impact in the current world to be worth the huge effort it would take."

That's the thing, for me - *is* it actually a huge effort? For any one person, yes, certainly. But compared to all the potential things that the community could be doing, in total, with good collaboration structures, I don't actually think it's that significant.

It shouldn't happen *at the cost of* other, more effective approaches, but given the large amount of people looking for community and purpose, I'd say we have a very long way to go before that becomes a concern.

And ultimately, volunteer labour is not interchangeable. Usually the alternative to "doing X" is "not doing anything at all", because those same volunteers might not actually have any interest at all in the alternative to X being proposed.