Ah yes, we have no money so let's invest a ton of work into something that will do nothing to bring in new or lost users, but, given our track record, has the potential to alienate even more of our ever fewer remaining users.
This is a marketing push disguised as an aesthetic change. Mozilla, please stop trying to make Pocket happen, it's not going to happen.
It was so bad that my main profile (with shittons of addons) at the time took about whooping ~10 seconds to cold-start.
It was not Gmail advertising that pushed people.
In theory Mozilla Firefox is a open-source project and it doesn't need users directly, as much as it needs contributors to help keep the project alive. Deciding if this counts as contributing or not, is an exercise I leave for others ;)
That said, I agree with the criticism that this video (which is supposed to highlight a/the new design) is failing spectacularly at showcasing that very design.
I think I saw one screenshot zap by which showed tabs looking somewhat differently? Otherwise it was just lots of people talking and close-ups of portions of Firefox which already looks the same way? Not very informative.
To highlight the design I would appreciate something slower (less zaps!) and less polished where they would just use the browser and let the design speak for itself.
Daddy Google need to keep them alive to avoid a lawsuit, so free money is guaranteed to keep coming.