Does anyone else wonder where all this recent FUD about Firefox's funding is actually coming from? No offense meant, but this really doesn't seem natural to me.
Firefox's funding has been this way for well over a decade. Why does it only suddenly matter now, when Google is under a lot of fire politically and making a lot of anti-consumer moves in rapid succession?
Maybe there's a ton of people who truly weren't aware of this, but I really have to ask what the motivation is behind the tech news outlets suddenly talking about this all again. It's not new information. It really doesn't qualify as news.
Firefox has been more or less doing fine for multiple decades now, regardless of the main source of their finances. While I don't agree with their continued fad chasing, I have no concerns about the longevity or trustworthyness of their core "product", the browser. I'm even less concerned when I consider the large, diverse, and healthy community of forks surrounding it.
Edit:
More to the topic: Gecko is why Firefox is important. More specifically, the fact that it uses a unique underlying engine. Doesn't matter what they call it, just that there is an open source web browser engine that exists at feature parity with commericial and closed source browsers.
More edit:
As far as Mozilla's decisions making sense in terms as a business, I really could care less. To me, Mozilla's existence is to ensure continued adequate funding for Firefox development and maintenance.
Any further pursuits in the realm of things that would be good for open source software and privacy are important but secondary to keeping their primary product, the browser, alive.
It's also vitally important to note that Google has a basic business contract in which they pay Mozilla to make Google the default search engine in Firefox. That is it. They don't own Mozilla or Firefox, have any direct seat on the board, or have any postion with them involving decision making or influencing. No one knows what happens behind closed doors, but there has never been any quantifiable reason to believe that Google is pulling Firefox's strings.