My guess is that the researchers don't "own" the research they're doing since it was being funded by the university. It's property of the university and if you take it and try to sell it now you're stealing IP.
It's been awhile since I looked, but when I did a few years ago they had hundreds of subdomains for their videos (both regular and ads) and would rotate what they're used for all the time. That's why its basically impossible for PiHole to anything.
Google does some stupid things, but Chromium is "too big to fail" at this point and it's too essential to products like Android which are also at that same point.
But hypothetically if Google stopped contributing to Chromium the project would be forked and it would live on. Frankly, Google removing themselves from Chromium would fix the one major complaint a lot of people have with it.
I think it's going to burst regardless. Plenty of companies have fully embraced the remote model, and many more are only doing hybrid. Even if they don't completely sell off their buildings they're not going to use as much. One company in my city is already closing their HQ and reorganizing their other offices: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/07/progressive-to-close-...
It had just started to become profitable right before Elon bought it. Granted that’s like 1 or 2 profitable quarters out of dozens, but still counts I guess