Firefox is excellent, despite the grumbling of people who want it to have a narrower focus (which I'm not disagreeing with).
I think you just answered your own questions.
> I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy?
I believe the vast majorty of people do not care about their privacy, answering GP's question.
Re privacy it comes across to me as a bit tin foil hat worrying about the evil doers tracking my thoughts. I mean sure I don't want criminals to know my home address and bank account details but re Google knowing say I use mac and advertising some Apple stuff to me - what's the problem?
The issue is that the data isn't limited to device type and Google uses this data to sell to marketers. The more data they have on you, the more money they make which is why they're incentivized to break the rules and vacuum up as much data as possible even if it breaks the law. Hence, less than 6 months ago they paid over a billion dollars for "unlawfully tracking users’ geolocation, incognito searches, and collecting biometric data without proper consent"[1]
They're incentivized to abuse your data and owning the browser allows them for unchecked access to your internet browsing and information about you.
1. https://euroweeklynews.com/2025/06/01/time-to-uninstall-goog...