Because I do not condone that move.
It will be difficult because I have been using Firefox for years and tried to avoid anything Chrome-based and I am not very happy with Google's Manifest v3 approach, but Mozilla just crossed a red line for me.
Mozilla the company has made some terrible decisions that I strongly disagree with (update page featuring a movie ad, pocket integration, removing a search engine from the defaults, nerfing android addons for no reason)
But compared to every other browser, I don't understand how people think it's even a comparison. Chrome (user history tracking, targeted advertising, FLOC, manifest v3, strong-arming due to market share, etc etc), Edge (same as chrome but replace G with M), and Brave (referral link injection, cryptocoin adware).
To me, no single thing on FF's list is worse than any single thing in the other list. And together it's out of the question which is better.
I don't think it's useful to tell regular people not to use Firefox either unless you tell them they really shouldn't be using the other three (which I doubt many are doing). Am I missing something? Honest question - do you really think the negatives of having someone use not-firefox outweigh the negatives of Firefox?
Mozilla claimed that their mission was to empower users. Some people are more upset by hypocrisy than the actual actions. If they want to change https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ from "More power to you." to, say, "More power to us." then I'd personally be a lot less irritated at them.
(This isn't specifically a comment on the current subject, BTW; I've been increasingly irritated by Mozilla's hypocrisy for years now.)
This hypocracy+everything I listed about FF+everything else Mozilla has done is a drop in the bucket compared to the user-hostile world that is Edge/Brave/Chrome.
To be clear: I agree with you. I harden Firefox because their defaults do not make me happy. But it's going to take a whole lot more bad decisions before they're worse than their competition.
I do think it would have been _better_ if Firefox made the set of included-by-default search providers something that gets merged into your profile, so that future removals only affect new installations / new profiles (and existing users who happen to use that engine don't have to go out of their way to re-add them after an update). I don't really care _which_ search engine definitions come with a browser out-of-the-box, as long as they're easy to customize.
I would much rather they use their dwindling influence on standards bodies to block and sabotage the changes that necessitate the constant updating (and attendant maintenance burden which takes smaller browser projects out of the running) at every turn; and if it so happens that this results in their influence disappearing even faster and/or them getting booted, then at least this may pave the way for the long-overdue antitrust suit against Google that many have been saying Mozilla's existence serves to prevent.
(It's not like Firefox is developed by unpaid volunteers. Am I using the browser "for free" if Google sees it as advantageous to pay them money for, among others, my continued existence as a user of the browser?)
Similar to duck duck go bangs but it has to be a prefix and ! Isn't required. w => wipedia, y => youtube
Thank you for your answer. Could you elaborate on it?
Is it a software freedom question to you? Or perhaps a free speech one?
A browser is a browser. It does not have to promote a moral view. In fact it has to provide ways to find information. Not to limit purposefully ways to find information.
You are somewhat right on a meta level: I think a browser should promote the moral view that it shouldn't promote any moral view in particular.