Currently, Google pays Firefox’s bill by having them set their default search engine to Google.
This will no longer be when Chrome is in the hands of another party. DOJ is currently advocating for this forced sellout.
So will Firefox be no more after that?
Even if Google stopped paying Mozilla, the organization has enough in savings to operate for several years. That’s plenty of time to cut back on spending and find other revenue sources. My only concern would be that they cut back on Firefox development rather than what I would consider a side project.
But the cost here is that, whatever Mozilla cuts, is going to hurt Firefox at some capacity. Mozilla recently had made cuts to where, they don’t have a voice to advocate for open internet, for example. Which waters down what stand that they have to be an influence.
The majority cost of Firefox is engineering.
Any cutbacks will negatively affect the ability for Firefox to keep up and will probably start a slow decline towards collapse and irrelevance.