But I personally don't need to speculate, since I find the notion very unlikely. Meta needs Mozilla here since anything they propose will be viewed with intense suspicion. If they are legitimately interested in a moderately privacy-preserving solution, which they very well might be (and not out of the goodness of their hearts), then they'll need buy-in from other players. Mozilla is probably a fiercer opponent than it is a useful ally, but just in terms of gathering support it's a decent place to start.
Mozilla needs Meta in order to make any headway on the privacy disaster that is the modern web. It doesn't have the market share to dominate the fight, so it makes sense to forge a temporary alliance when other pressures push Meta in the right direction. (This is assuming Mozilla's intentions are noble. I work for Mozilla, and am biased to think so, so I won't second-guess. But cleaning up this shit-show is kinda part of our mission, so it really shouldn't be hard to swallow.)
It seems like Google is the elephant in the room. Could Meta + Mozilla move the needle against Google's objections? I doubt it. Meta + Mozilla + public opinion? Maybe.
> If they really cared about user privacy, they would have shipped an ad blocking and anti-tracking tech in their browser by default. However, if you look at where their revenue is coming from, you quickly realize why that will never happen.
First, Firefox does ship a lot of anti-tracking tech, as much of it by default as possible without breaking sites too much.
Second, they'd ship an ad blocker by default if they really cared about making a useless statement. I doubt Google would pay much for search traffic that generates zero revenue. Even if Mozilla were to magically diversify its income to survive the loss of Google, though, I'm not sure such a move would be in the long-term best interests of the web. Tracking is the true enemy of privacy, not ads.
Ads suck and are doing massive damage to our civilization, in ways far beyond what I've heard discussed. But a zero-ad future isn't automatically going to be peaches and cream either. It could easily end up being a web (and media) of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.