random thoughts
funding: a mix i suppose. volonteer work, i mean we do tons of volonteer work daily in terms of writing open source code, providing documentation and stuff like that. fundraising from persons (like wikimedia) and small and big companies that care about these things. funding should cover operations.
ads: the browser should come with a ad-blocking tech by default. this can happen because the browser does not come from a company/community that relies on ad revenue to pay salaries. the internet, especially the desktop internet, is horrible to use without ad-blocking tech and ads and lack of privacy goes hand-in-hand like nothing else.
privacy: i'm not a cookie expert but my gut-feeling tells me there's more to do in terms of creating a browser that tries to make the end-user as anonymous as possible and prevent the mega-tracking cookie networks that build up massive profiles about people, while still allowing web sites to function. also see search below. also https-only within a reasonable time