So you’re not claiming open source is sufficient but you are seemingly defending it is a better situation.
While I and some other commenters are signaling we don’t think the situation is better.
To me the fundamental part of the equation is outsized power and influence. Being open source or not is part of the equation, but not as close to as fundamental as the core issues with this. This is made much much worse now than 20 years ago with the costs to get your own browser going so much higher. Which leads back to the outsized power being the fundamental issue.
Open source can even be argued to be a benefit to Google retaining power. Having enough attention diverted to the possibilities of open source when Google has only monumentally gained from open source with paltry benefits that are usually brought up as defenses against its power. Like AOSP mattering because China doesn’t use Google’s Android and some other irrelevant projects.
Any fundamental differences so far are giving Google and any other major central powers more power.
Yes, that's exactly right. I think Chromium being open source changes the equation for the better compared to the IE situation. Whether it is sufficiently better to make it work, I'm not sure. I do see Google's outsized influence as a significant problem. I'm not denying that at all.
The fact that browsers like Brave have made changes that go against Google's interests is cause for some optimism though.
It is very permissively licensed, and Microsoft’s Edge is so successful and Microsoft is contributing a ton upstream. In a few years time they will have de-facto equal say over where the codebase goes. If Google disagrees too much, we will in fact see a fork.
Furthermore, from what I can tell, Edge users are predominantly former IE users (rather than coming from other browsers), and combined IE + Edge use is still declining over time.