You may want to consider getting involved in the recently announced WebExtensions Community Group in order to discuss your concerns with the future of browser extensions with browser vendors and other extension developers.
http://w3c.org/community/webextensions https://github.com/w3c/webextensions
Edit: I want add, recently built my own Firefox - pulled out all the Pocket shit and tweaked the UI a bit "my way". Was actually not that hard. I'd love to see 20 forks of Firefox trying different things. Also, anyone know what happened to Librefox?
Honestly if chrome introduced bottom url bar and extensions without limitations... I'd switch back. I didn't switch for privacy but because chrome mobile is is clunky as a web app and I use my phone a lot during the day.
Now contrast that with the number of extensions Chrome would break for me with this update. It's a bigger number. Luckily I'm already on FF.