Being the agent of the user isn't particularly profitable. For example: companies want the users to be shown ads, and users generally don't want to be shown ads. But profit, which is to say money you make without having to directly work for it, comes from selling the user's interests away. Like, perhaps, choosing to take a bribe to cement Google's search monopoly, a fundamentally anticompetitive behavior which, even as it makes cash for Mozilla, costs the web far, far more.

They've lost their way completely as an independent entity, and a post like this that doesn't reaaally seem to grasp that weight of that conundrum comes no closer to convincing me that they can find their way back to the light.

I think you're right but I suspect that's the point. AI may be eating into search, and that could threaten their search licensing deal. Apple just struck a deal with Google to use Gemini, though it sounds like Apple paying Google for the privilege. Ominous if you're a browser company looking to sell a license for a preferred AI tool.