It's clear that they envy Google's position of owning a web browser (that everyone uses). But a play like this that involves entering a highly competitive market with openly vicious level of scrutiny... Like, what would you say if Facebook announced that they were announcing that they would be starting their first hospital? That's a hypothetical, but IRL Amazon tried to convince people that they wanted to be operating a chain of hair salons. My point is that it was easy to tell from the outside that this was corporate whim and they weren't going to be very willing to put up with it for long if it turned out to be genuinely hard, because there just wasn't enough alignment with the mission.

So yeah, I've no trouble understanding why they want to own a browser in theory. And since they can print money and want to hoover up talent anyway, why not just hire some engs. It looks good for the company's future growth prospects if people do believe you're serious. But it just seems to me that thus far they've shown no real hard commitment, no philosophical alignment, and no appreciation for the reasons what they're doing is difficult: it's a social problem not just a hiring one