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If Firefox was bad for Google then would Google be paying them 500m a year?

You could argue they do this in order to keep antitrust from looking at chrome too closely.

Google paid Firefox for search before Chrome even existed.

Yes, and at that point it was because Firefox was the second most popular browser. Motivations do change.

Of course but their reasoning will have changed over time. Because Firefox's market share has changed tremendously as well.