They couldn’t kill Firefox without having the US government come down on them for monopoly. Which the government is already looking at https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/tech/doj-google-lawsuit/index.html , so it’s not likely Google will risk it even further by shitting down funding to Firefox. Pretty sure they’ll point at Firefox to claim they’re not a monopoly.
So the lawsuit appears to be looking at Google as a search engine monopoly, not web browser, right? And if I’m understanding this right, assuming this lawsuit goes anywhere, it would actually incentivize Google to pull funding from Firefox to no longer support that search engine exclusivity deal.
This is pretty much the same situation as when Apple faced bankruptcy a while back and Microsoft essentially bailed them out.
Having an effective monopoly is better than a literal one for legal reasons
