Is Mozilla any better? They’ve lost their way and Google remains their largest source of income.
They have attempted many kinds of new business models. VPN partnership with Mullavad is really promising one, and maybe they finally get new source for income.
As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke. In fact, they knew about the joke about 'Mozilla living without Google' since 2007 [0] and 14 years later they once begged to Google to renew that contract and now they continue to bite the same hand that kept them alive.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...
Receiving money is not making someone automatically bad. You become bad when you do other things than originally agreed for receiving the money, in benefit of money provider.
> As long as they have Google's money and have them as the default search engine, their stance on privacy is a joke.
Also to my knowledge, you can change search engine anytime you want.
When you install Firefox, and fire up that first session, your keystrokes in the address bar are sent to Google. There is no warning, or permission prompt. The same would happen if you accidentally pasted-in your social security number, or some other sensitive information—it gets sent right off to Google. It was this type of behavior, in part, that led independent researchers at Trinity College to grade Firefox lower than Brave in terms of out-of-the-box privacy: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. In fact, Brave was found to be in its own class as the most private browser tested.
That probably explains why their brand is declining.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/study...
Your not liking a company that is giving them money and Brave's actual record of being endlessly slimy and untrustworthy.
Mozilla undermines Google at every chance so clearly the only result of Google money is what you see in Firefox and that is easily changable.
The internet is not made "good" by by browser manufacturers. This is something we fought about when Chrome assumed dominance, and it holds true today. The thing that makes the internet good is content: a perfect browser does literally nothing except format content properly into an open window. That's why power-users will still reach for Firefox, Chrome, or god forbid Safari before they consider trying "the cryptocurrency browser by a guy nobody trusts". Hell, I'd probably install the stupid Opera Gaming Browser before I'd be caught using Brave. That only leaves you the market of people who would like to earn pennies on the dollar browsing the web, but also pay for their DSL access every month. In all fairness, it's a market you've capitalized on very well, which is why it so closely resembles abuse. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck... I won't believe you when you're telling me it's actually a lion.
In fact Google did Chrome because it learned from Firefox that browsers are high-value user agents, and if they camouflage as passive/blind agents, then the big tech network superpower can have its way with the user, both through top sites such as Google search tied into default omnibus search engine setting, and over time via Google's browser tying (an antitrust term) other Google products, Google's accounts and analytics systems, and even full ad-exchange user-tracking, into its browser.
As for user feedback falling on deaf ears, you are simply making stuff up. Chrome ignores user complaints, Firefox too (roasted endlessly over killing XUL add-ons, Proton UX, etc.). Brave is all over Twitter and Reddit and we do live customer support there. I spend a good chunk of every day on it.
As Chesterton put it, one can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough. That seems to be the case with you and your "format content properly" statement here. If you are a Chrome user, I hope you disable account-based tracking in your Google account(s). If you use Firefox, ditto, and beware tracking pixels they whitelist on Google's SERP.
The time for a new engine may come, and I saw a clean room one go by on HN the other day. It's very hard to get to webcompat. Gecko loses compatibility as Firefox loses market share. For now, the more important fight is a level up: tracker blocking, users dealt into the economics, intermediaries and big tech dealt out.