Sustainable Futures:
Funding the Web Ecosystem

• Igalia
• Open Collective
• Servo
• Ladybird

My name is Stephanie.

I'm currently a web platform PM at Igalia, which is an open source consultancy.

If you've never heard of Igalia, you may still know our work, because we are the reason that CSS Grid exists in its form today, and more recently, we shipped the Has CSS pseudo class.

Among many other types of work, we're the people that you hire to build browser features when the browser vendors don't have resources.

So like Dave said, I told him I'd like to speak at State of the Browser this year, and I didn't realize it was my anniversary, so Dave graciously said, "You can take the first spot of the day so that I can head back home after."

But I think what I'm going to talk about today, starting with resources, stability, and the sustainability of the web ecosystem, is a good way to set the tone of the day.

This conference is called State of the Browser, and I think it's time more of us are aware of what is happening in the web platform ecosystem so that we can begin to enact change from the ground level up, because without the browser, none of us would be in this room today.

So to start, I want you to imagine an ecosystem that provides a resource that is capable of generating massive amounts of wealth.

People are constantly seeking this resource because of both the wealth it can provide and help create, and its beneficial properties to humans.

It generates tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, and enriches those who control it.

And instead of pouring the profits back into the ecosystem and into the infrastructure of this place where great wealth comes from, it instead goes back on to fund other things and make corporations richer.

Now some of you might be wondering, why is she giving us a high-level overview of Dune, and what does that have to do with the web platform?

And in case you are not familiar with the Dune plot, there is a substance and a resource called spice, and that formed an essential block of commerce and technological development in the known universe in that story.

So they say that he who controls the spice controls the universe, but I'm not talking about spice obviously.

I'm talking about browsers and access to information.

He who controls the browser controls the universe.

And I don't think this is such a wild statement.

We live in the information age, and the sub-period of that is the internet age.

Information is the spice of our world, and our access to a seemingly never-ending supply of information is gatekept through browsers.

And they have become critical infrastructure to life as we know it.

And they're extremely complex and expensive to maintain and keep healthy.

There are over 5 billion internet users every single day, and that's 67% of the global population.

And they use browsers, which are free, to do so.

Now this happens thanks to search royalties that fund browsers, kind of like an unofficial tax.

It makes sense to use search for this because search engines get most of their value from the web, so paying back should help to keep the web thriving.

But this creates a system and a cycle that has many problems.

It pays for browsers, not browser engines.

The process to get a cut of funding is super unclear.

How do smaller browsers and search engines get a seat at the table?

Add-in search revenue does not all go back into web infrastructure.

I used to work on the Microsoft Edge team.

The revenue from Bing was not coming back to our team, I can tell you that.

There's also legal and regulatory pressure on the system.

And then the somewhat horrifying reality is that our primary browsers are owned by large corporations.

Now why is that horrifying?

Well the over-thinker and the anxious person in me likes to ask big questions.

So when I was looking at what it means for a corporation to own something, my intrusive thoughts asked what happens if those corporations disappear?

Are we prepared to let big tech be too big to fail?

So what happens if corporations disappear or even broken up or split up?

If we look at the Chromium project, it's open source.

But who do you think does the primary maintenance of that browser engine?

Google does.

The overwhelmingly large amount of commits comes from Google every year.

But when we look at how many browsers that we have just based on Chromium, they are only providing a fraction of the work that Google is to maintain Chromium.

That's a lot of browsers depending on Google to just keep maintenance going.

So what happens, worst case scenario, if Google disappears?

Now when I first gave this talk three months ago, I used Google as an extreme example, not knowing that this antitrust case was coming, but I guess joke's on me, so oops, sorry for manifesting this.

But search and ad revenue is so lucrative that Google has been paying for exclusive search placements in browsers and a judge deemed that they hold a monopoly in this space.

Google pays about 500 million to Mozilla, which is damn near their operating budget, just for search placement in Firefox.

And they pay 20 billion to Apple. $20 billion for search placement.

And if my quick search online is to be believed, Apple's projected revenue for 2024 is about $425 billion.

So if Google doesn't pay them that 20 billion for search placement, Apple is still left with 405 billion.

An absolutely gross amount, quite frankly.

So they lose just under 5% of their revenue if Google is ordered that they cannot pay for search placement.

But Google, if they were not able to pay just Apple for that search placement, would lose an estimated 65% of their revenue.

And I don't think we're prepared for the tidal wave of technological stagnation that would come our way and ripple through the ecosystem.

If Apple doesn't get its 20 billion from Google, big whatever.

But Mozilla's existence, as far as we know, is currently being propped up by this funding from Google.

So the ramifications of Google not being able to pay for search placement could bring browser engine diversity into an even more precarious position.

And you might say, hold up, Steph, you said it's open source.

It's not going to disappear.

Even my husband, while we were talking about this, said it's open source.

Chromium is open source.

It will live on.

But just because something is open source doesn't mean it has the foundations to remain a stable and viable option.

Being open source doesn't solve anything when cracks in the open source system are starting to show, as has already been reported.

Google had 105,000 commits out of 110,000 total last year.

Who was going to be paying for the very large void that would be left if Google disappeared?

Open source needs sustainable funding, which it doesn't have.

And the web ecosystem doesn't have a sustainable system in place to keep it going in its current form.

Our current digital infrastructure is dependent on a system that is designed to take and take and take from what already exists without contributing back an amount that ensures the future is stable, effectively strip mining the digital web ecosystem.

So what is the current system of funding for browser engines?

So we have a company with a web engine and a browser on top of that web engine.

And they have a search engine to access information, aka EarthSpice.

And when you search, you are overwhelmed with ads.

And those ads bring in billions of dollars to the point that we've just discussed that some companies with browsers pay other companies with browsers to use their search engine in a competing browser.

So the company gets their money, and ideally you think there would be a nice split where a lot of money goes back to the company, but a good chunk of it also goes back into making the web engine better.

But in reality, that web engine is getting a trickle of the money from the search revenue that only exists because of the web engine.

Here's a great example of how much browsers want you to search on their search engine.

Did you know that Microsoft Edge will pay you to use Bing?

They have gamified their search engine so you accumulate points that you can then redeem for things.

I'm not sure how it works in the UK, but in the US, I could get Starbucks gift cards, I could get Amazon gift cards, Xbox, I could even donate my points to charity if I was feeling very generous.

The point is, though, they're paying to keep you on Bing, to keep you searching in Bing.

Now the other aspect of this cycle of funding is that the company that owns the browser is going to push for features that benefit their company to be prioritized over the greater web development community's wants and needs.

So they also steer the direction of the platform and the ecosystem because they need it to improve their products and to retain customers and continue the cycle of funding.

So hopefully with the briefest of overviews, we can agree that the system to fund the web is currently broken.

It's not sustainable.

So how do we even go about beginning to fix this?

It's going to be hard because how do you get people to care about a problem that doesn't seem to be affecting them right this moment?

This isn't going to be solved today or tomorrow or even next week.

But the goal of today is to start the conversation now because it's less catastrophic to fix things before the system entirely collapses.

And you might be thinking, Steph, okay, you're sounding a little bit like a doomer when it comes to the internet and access to the web, talking about collapse and catastrophe.

But am I really?

It's very hard to go throughout my day without relying on access to the web.

I use the web for everything from accessing my account information for my bank.

My job at a galio wouldn't even exist without the web platform.

I use it to pay and sign up for utilities, book appointments.

My life is dependent on the web.

When was the last time that you actually used a physical phone book to look up a company's contact information?

Who's used a paper map recently?

What would happen if everyone lost access to their browser right now?

What would that mean?

So what do we need realistically?

If we're being blunt, the ecosystem needs more money to ensure that our foundations for the web are continually being improved and stabilized and not relying on large corporations to be the gatekeepers of the web through their browsers.

So how do we get more money?

And how do we encourage the contribution of it toward a more sustainable system?

These are just a few ideas.

This list is not going to be exhaustive.

But again, we're just trying to start the conversation.

So we could have a donation-based system that is voluntary or culture-based.

If you're familiar with Open Collective, it could be something like that.

We could provide incentives for donating or working on web infrastructure, like tax breaks, so that there is some tangible benefit to contributing your time.

There's retroactive public goods funding, which delivers incentives to public good projects based on current impact rather than anticipated future work, i.e. not startup culture, where you're funded with the expectation that your company is going to multiply that investment.

We could even try and fix the current system to be a more effective tax that funds the work for the web.

There are probably so many other ways that could potentially provide revenue to finance the web.

And I mean so many more.

Who wouldn't want to pay to watch merge conflicts get resolved live?

Clearly, though, this is a problem in the ecosystem, and we need to consider what we need to do to fix it.

So if we do try and reform the existing system, it needs to be mandatory.

So we could start by using the opportunity given to us by the EU stepping in, or even now with the US, with lawsuits relating to search defaults.

Another option is getting engines to introduce license terms that require participation from all parties that rely on their code.

And then additionally, we could also use browser choice screens as leverage by restricting whether or not a browser shows up on those screens based on how they have contributed back into the ecosystem.

Because there are companies that were founded by billionaires who want to launch themselves into space that have the means to contribute in a meaningful way, but they don't.

And this continues to put strain on the ecosystem.

If everyone continues to take and take and take, the flow of meaningful commits back into the engines becomes a trickle compared to what they could be.

If we want to fix this, we're going to need a way to govern it all.

So we need a power structure that's credible.

It needs to be accountable and be able to represent multiple interests.

We need governance that pushes power back into the hands of the wider web community.

We know that there is a ton of collective experience in the different standard spaces, even in this room there is experience.

So it's not like we'll be starting from scratch.

We can make this happen.

And then along with governance, there's allocation.

How do we distribute the funds that we raise?

We could have small funds for each workstream so people pay into the funds that they want to.

You could have one big fund and then democratize the process through votes.

We could use telemetry to detect usage and distribute appropriately according to that telemetry.

We could use impact evaluators or things like hyper certs that award based on positive impact.

Again, there are many more ways we could allocate that we're probably not even thinking about.

As with this entire conversation, anything is possible and we need to start somewhere.

Our digital infrastructure should be solid and secure so that the future of the web can flourish and thrive.

It's a huge undertaking with many possible paths.

And like I said, this isn't going to be fixed today, but we need to start somewhere.

So let's keep this conversation going beyond this room.

You might be saying, well, what can I do today?

We need more people outside of the big browser companies to push the web forward.

Shameless plug, hire companies like Igalia to work on the web platform and open source software.

And if you have ideas, talk about it.

Start a conversation.

The system needs to be revamped and the sky is literally the limit.

And maybe in the process of that, we end up dismantling global capitalism.

Who knows?

Because that's really the root cause here.

Again, the sky's the limit.

Think big.

Here are a few other resources to start the conversation.

I will leave this up if you'd like to snap a photo.

I also have some other links I will drop in the Discord because let's ensure we're building a new system that can outlive us and sustain itself well into the future so that the information, like spice, can freely flow.