Turns out firefox is a product of the for profit mozilla corporation the twin of the non profit mozilla foundation, clever way to play both sides.
Then there's history that shows that firefox is mostly free software but not entirely see icecat, iceweasel, firefox pocket, talkback, etc.
Then again a free license is not a guarantee of no wrongdoings.
Lastly mozilla definitely not champions the interests of users, there what they say and then there's what they do and here history again depicts a different picture:
- Users asked for blocking of tracking and ads, mozilla repeatedly refused to deliver.
- Users asked for keeping the UI they were accustomed to, Mozilla did not care and pushed the new Australis to fit their agenda of unifying experience over desktop and mobile
- KDE users asked for something more integrated than simply dropping the gnome file selection windows, the bug has been lingering somewhere for more than a decade
- Linux users asked for alsa support, a dev came forward offering to fix mozilla own shortcomings and maintain it, the answer was that they would continue their plan of abandoning alsa for pulseaudio.
- Users have repeatedly ask to not make firefox more chrome like, firefox is still getting increasingly a trying hard to be chrome lookalike.
- Users are asking to keep support for extensions as it is the reason they use firefox, mozilla is adamant they will go on with theirs plans of replacing support of extensions by the one used by chrome.
- Users asked for the return of the removed status bar, Mozilla denied this.
- Users wanted to keep DRM out of firefox, Mozilla put DRM in firefox.
- Users did not want mandatory signed extensions, Mozilla gave then mandatory signed extensions.
This list could go on and on and on, firefox history is littered with such examples of not caring about the interests of users and not listening to them and giving priority to their own agenda.
That been said, google, apple and mozilla are all collecting personal data of their users and they're all us based and as such are all under the effect of the patriot act.
I admit that I do distrust google and apple more than mozilla, but history and experience taught me that I should not trust mozilla/firefox for something else than doing their own thing whatever that is.
As a result I keep away from google/apple as if it was the plague, but I still have firefox around because with the addition of a dozen extensions[1] I can disable most of the crap mozilla put in there, add what they removed, add what they refused to put in and getting closer to be something I can use.
Nonetheless, Firefox is on its way out now that it is unable to provide audio and is about to drop support for extensions that are required to make it useful. I have to admit that it's not as much the dropping of alsa that motivated this but the way mozilla handled this and their attitude. It's maybe the 3rd or 4th time I quit firefox but this time I'm not coming back.
[1]: ublock origin, noscript, classic theme restorer, all-in-one sidebar, all-in-one gestures, downthemall, firebug, new add on bar, privacy settings, self-destructing cookies, tab mix plus, request policy continued, tab groups, tab groups helper, screengrab (fix version), random agent spoofer, SSLeuth, and a few more. I had some extension to make bookmarks usable in firefox but I stopped using bookmarks altogether and now use a combination of wallabag and shaarli instead.