You can fork it but Google will still be the main maintainer but also the promoter of new APIs so your fork will be forced to either implement those new APIs or to accept their upstream changes.
With multiple engines that have a big enough user base, you force the actors to negotiate standards.
What will you do with your fork when Google will start to implement a replacement for HTML like they tried to do with Dart or AMP ? With enough competitors, Google is forced to make those unilateral evolutions backward compatible with what works everywhere.
With only one engine they can force their new tech in the engine and bet on the fact that it will be integrated in the forks because it’s mostly one pull request away on GitHub.
Maybe that would work if the fork somehow managed to evolve as fast as Google on Blink. But this literally means that you need Google’s kind of money amounts.
With multiple engines that have a big enough user base, you force the actors to negotiate standards.
What will you do with your fork when Google will start to implement a replacement for HTML like they tried to do with Dart or AMP ? With enough competitors, Google is forced to make those unilateral evolutions backward compatible with what works everywhere.
With only one engine they can force their new tech in the engine and bet on the fact that it will be integrated in the forks because it’s mostly one pull request away on GitHub.
Maybe that would work if the fork somehow managed to evolve as fast as Google on Blink. But this literally means that you need Google’s kind of money amounts.