> The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.
You under estimated the work to develop a web browser. Vivaldi are 60 people.[1] They produce an unstable Chromium fork and email program. They couldn't commit to keep uBlock Origin working.
That's a good example. I'm probably significantly underestimating the amount of people needed. $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.
> $500M can hire a lot of $250k salaried engineers, though.
$250,000 is conservative for the total cost to employ a software engineer in the US. And their expenses are not limited to software engineer salaries of course.
A fair question would be what Google or Apple spend to produce their web browsers. The answers are secrets. $1 billion is a common Chrome development cost estimate in my experience.
You under estimated the work to develop a web browser. Vivaldi are 60 people.[1] They produce an unstable Chromium fork and email program. They couldn't commit to keep uBlock Origin working.
[1] https://vivaldi.com/team/