They would have had to build that infrastructure. I’m not saying fundraising is easy. But it’s possible as proven by wikipedia. They could have cut Google loose 10 years ago and said "we’re going to use our runway to try to put together a wikimedia foundation style fundraising operation. I don’t think they can do it now because the trust, goodwill and quite frankly, userbase is gone.
Mozilla is going to kill it too. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsdmHepmqMNqWM0BmW2RHemnarYeQk0bk?feature=shared