You are quite perceptive. Yes, I find the ousting of Eich to be extremely distasteful. I haven't used a Mozilla product since. Can't speak on the SJW thing though, I have no "anti-SJW" feelings in general, esp. as it relates to Mozilla.

Do you know some magic formula that would have enabled Mozilla to halt Chrome's "unchecked rise", given the behemoth that was pushing it?

Despite having only a fraction of Google's resources, Mozilla continues to develop a competitive browser that provides a realistic alternative to Chrome. But it has never had access to the sort of channels and budget that Google used to promote its browser.

(Of course Mozilla has made its share of mistakes. That's an inevitable part of attempting to do anything in this world. But "morally bankrupt" is not a description I recognise.)

>On 6 October 2017, Mozilla announced a test where approximately 1% of users downloading Firefox in Germany would receive a version with Cliqz software included. The feature provided recommendations directly in the browser's search field. Recommendations included news, weather, sports, and other websites and were based on the user's browsing history and activities. The press release noted that "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit," and that "Cliqz uses several techniques to attempt to remove sensitive information from this browsing data before it is sent from Firefox."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz#Integration_with_Firefox

Well the shenanigans was that it meant that users Firefox with Cliqz pre-installed had all their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers.

I was mostly referring to Cliqz, but I don't like Pocket being forced in the browser itself. And all the "recommended from pocket" content on the home page.

Yes, you can disable it but why not make it a preinstalled extension that can be removed entirely.