> And yet, today Firefox has single-digit-percent market share, and the dominant player is in some ways worse than Microsoft was. MS seemed to want to make the web stagnate, while Google wants to turn the web into (more of) a privacy-free, advertising machine, and has been steering web standards in that direction.

I think that reinforces GP point that consumers aren't driven by privacy. Firefox didn't take off due to privacy, it took off because IE6 was a miserable experience. The killer features that drew people to firefox were pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing and less crashes.