MITI is Mozilla trying to keep the internet credible as a source of news and information. This is in keeping with Mozilla's core principles. Give the blog post a careful read, as it might change your mind: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/08/08/mozilla-information...
Re: Cliqz, working with a search-oriented company might be a way that Mozilla can help avoid monopolies in search. The goal is to find new ways to keep the web open, so that new challengers have a level playing field vs. dominant companies.
Andreas wrote a good blog post about the worrying monopolistic trends in search a couple years ago: https://andreasgal.com/2015/03/30/data-is-at-the-heart-of-se...
Edited to add: Cliqz is a very privacy-conscious company, and I think that respect for the user was a major factor in Mozilla partnering with Cliqz. This is just to say that, AIUI, the partnership was evaluated, again, in keeping with Mozilla's principles.
Also, here's the Mozilla manifesto, which documents those guiding principles: https://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/
They followed that up with some ten years of "web standards! web standards! open web standards!". This is the game Mozilla plays. That's why they won on the web: everyone does it their way now, even if their browser isn't dominant.
The workflow is:
1 - Build webextension 2 - Upload to AMO 3 - Choose "distribute on AMO" or "sign and distribute on your site"
It's a measure to prevent casual trojans, there are many ways around it for non-casuals and developers to employ.
That's actually pretty cool. Can you give me an example distro that does that with Firefox (w/FF brandings)?
>They seem to by trying hard to squander their reputation.
The other part of it is Mozilla building the browser for the lowest common denominator at the price of user control.