> Google throws hundreds of engineers at this [building Chrome] and they have full-time people working on it around the clock.
It was many hundreds already about a decade ago. I haven't done any recent research (the Chromium Git repo is where you'd get the source data to analyze), but I assume it's in the (several?) thousands now.
Edit (ran into some problem replying to the comment below):
An in-depth analysis performed today would need to consider that some of the active chromium.org committers are working on non-browser-related things like Chrome OS.
That said, I'm assuming 75+% of active chromium.org committers don't work on those non-browser parts. I also consider the Chrome Web Store a part of the browser - but I can't imagine that needing lots of developers in comparison to these large numbers, even when you start thinking about the abuse aspects.
Having said that, it should be easy to filter out those by just discarding certain directories.
Last time I looked the 7 day active committers was about 750. So with holidays, people who don't commit for a week, PMs and other management etc, my guess is around ~1000 people, maybe a bit more. I doubt it's several thousand. Maybe if you include ChromeOS?
The way lots of things are integrated into "Chrome" as an organization and a product definitely means a lot more people touch something you can call "Chrome" now. Chrome OS, Chrome Web Store, etc.
It was many hundreds already about a decade ago. I haven't done any recent research (the Chromium Git repo is where you'd get the source data to analyze), but I assume it's in the (several?) thousands now.
Edit (ran into some problem replying to the comment below):
An in-depth analysis performed today would need to consider that some of the active chromium.org committers are working on non-browser-related things like Chrome OS.
That said, I'm assuming 75+% of active chromium.org committers don't work on those non-browser parts. I also consider the Chrome Web Store a part of the browser - but I can't imagine that needing lots of developers in comparison to these large numbers, even when you start thinking about the abuse aspects.
Having said that, it should be easy to filter out those by just discarding certain directories.