While they are certainly dependent on Google funding, I believe this dependence is a net negative for the long term health of Firefox development. It implicitly skews the incentives of Mozilla leadership, making them comfortable with getting lots of money they didn't really work for and giving them some funny ideas on where their priorities lie.
Presumably a proper non profit would be more incentivized to stick to the projects ideals so they can brag about it in their fundraising activities (with perhaps a little too much of that money going into administrator pockets on the down low). Meanwhile Google's funding creates a status quo where it's pretty much fine with anything so long as Firefox continues to exist as a scarecrow to anti-trust suits. It effectively muscles out all the potential well meaning donors which could have helped steer things in a more positive direction, and acts like a sword of damocles floating over Mozilla's head, engorging the organization in addictive cash they don't deserve, and implicitly discouraging them from ever stepping on Google's toes lest the money hose gets turned off.
These days I'd call Firefox "good enough" from a privacy & open source perspective. It checks the boxes, and while I'm actually pretty open to the UI changes they have made over the years, I've gotten the sense that top Mozilla leadership don't really care about Firefox anymore, even distancing themself from it in certain respects. These days Firefox doesn't really seem to be going anywhere, it does the bare minimum by implementing web standards but all efforts to distinguish it from Chrome seem to be gradually extinguished. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point if they eventually turned off Mv2 support in a few years from now, despite all promises to the contrary, citing complexity or perhaps even "security" like Google's been doing as the reason.
If in the "worst" case Mozilla shutters down or abandons Firefox development after losing their money hose, perhaps the mindshare of the community they have been hoarding away all these years will coalesce around a healthier fork with an organization structure closer to the Linux foundation, maybe then Firefox would actually have a future again.
IMO, this is the best think that could happen for Firefox. Mozilla as an organization has been thoroughly corrupted by huge buckets of money being thrown at them by Google. "The Resource Curse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse) doesn't only apply to countries.
Just skimmed the ruling [1]. A pillar appears to be that “Google’s distribution agreements are exclusive.” So if Mozilla e.g. auctions off the next N installs default-search engine designation, it might work? (Also, the ruling doesn’t ban exclusive distribution agreements in general.)
I'm struggling to connect how Google's last major browser engine competitor potentially losing it's funding due to a separate monopoly issue is similar to laws being passed to reduce death and hospitalizations.
FOF ¶ 334. Google’s default placements on Firefox generate 80% of Mozilla’s overall operating revenue, demonstrating that the vast majority of query volume on Firefox goes through defaults.
The DOJ is concerned with moving the needle on one specific issue (search monopoly a.k.a. seatbelts) and is not concerned about the side effects on related entities (Firefox a.k.a. undertakers).
The analogy is: Sometimes the one negative outcome (Mozilla & hospitals losing money) is a price well paid for another positive one (regulating monopolies & reduced deaths).
It's not just the "rendering engine" it's the entire software stack from down at the bottom with the IO and networking libraries to mid-layers of JS and core rendering, to very top with the UI toolkit. There's not much in Thunderbird that isn't Firefox and it's almost all custom Mozilla code, about 20 million lines of it, and not heavily reliant on major OS libs like so many other large-scale apps.
Just so you know, the money users donate goes towards political causes not towards Firefox.
When you are donating, you are donating to the Mozilla Foundation (which is a non-profit). All Firefox development is done through Mozilla Corporation (which is a for profit entity). There is no way to donate to Firefox.
