What is the advantage of building a browser engine from scratch? As opposed to just forking Blink and maintaining it as a separate project? Seems like the former just adds an ungodly amount of work and still doesn't solve the problem of Google using its weight to control web standards.

If Firefox and Apple can't rein in Google with their competing engines, what exactly does Ladybird change?

> Firefox is controlled opposition practically owned by Google

And how does that "ownership" look like in practice? Has Google ever decided how things should be done "or else"? What Google does is pay a protection tax. Without Firefox around and independent, the EU is almost sure to break Chrome away from Google, especially with the warm EU-US relations now. So Google pays and is going to pay as much as it takes to keep Firefox alive, kicking, and doing whatever it wants.

Google Chrome needs Firefox to be moderately successful more than Firefox needs that money. Or else it might become someone else's Chrome.

> Follow the money

Everyone has this revelation once. If it was that easy then customers would practically own the company providing them the services. Do you and your fellow paying customers feel like you own any company, especially big-tech? Do you all control Netflix? Amazon? Apple?

I heard Mozilla described as "Google's antitrust lawsuit insurance."

That doesn't really seem relevant these days though. Although I guess duopolies are totally fine.