I assume he meant "absolutely it really would be that underfunded", because that is true.
Elsewhere in these comments people have estimated that Google pays at least 1000 people to work on Chrome. That's about the size of all of Mozilla, and a lot of those Mozilla staff are necessarily not working directly on Firefox --- you need HR, accountants, marketing, etc. Also, Google pays its developers significantly more than Mozilla does, on average; Mozilla developers tend to get big raises when they move to Google.
And that's just direct spending. Historically Google has done a lot of Chrome marketing on its Web sites, which is prime advertising real estate that would cost astronomical amounts of money if it was for sale. And historically Google has paid hardware and software vendors to preinstall Chrome, which is also expensive, though I'm not sure how much that happens these days.
I've not seen any estimates that Google employs 1000 devs to work on Chrome. Only that in the more than decade long history of Chromium 1000 Google devs have worked on it in total.
I don't want to dig through hundreds of comments again --- but as someone who worked on Firefox for 15 years and knows a bunch of Chrome people, I believe those estimates.
