I still use Firefox specifically because of Chrome's privacy concerns and was under the impression after dropping FirefoxOS Mozilla was headed in the right direction.

It seems they've convinced themselves that the only way to improve the product is to collect data on their users, rather than continuing to push the idea of privacy - which, in my opinion, if marketed correctly, could win over a lot of users. The browser is still fundamentally awesome.

This seems like the kind of thing they could push through their TestPilot program and just market it, rather than pushing it to everyone by default. But I imagine they want to push it to everyone specifically so they can take advantage of those who are ignorant to the ability to opt-out.