Librewolf is a Firefox fork with this crap removed.
I use Firefox. I hate ads. I don't love that Mozilla engages in some level of affiliate deals to pay the bills, but it's the only viable alternative to Google controlling the entire web and doing much worse tracking/advertising at this point, unless Mozilla can figure out some other revenue stream.
Chromium-based "privacy-focused" browsers can only exist as long as they're not popular enough to move the needle on Google's ad business. Firefox derivatives can only exist as long as Mozilla can pay the bills, which they almost certainly can't do if nobody uses Firefox (no reason for Google to pay for search priority for an audience of zero, and no affiliate deals for an audience of zero).
The more people use Firefox forks, the sooner Google controls everything. You might personally benefit in the short term, with "complete" privacy, so I can understand why some might choose that option, but you need to accept that you're contributing to Google's dominance by doing so.
Mozilla could have added years ago a donation or subscription to fund the development of Firefox, but they don't want that. Mozilla wants all the money for its charitable activities instead.
There will be a time when they have no money anymore, but it's only their fault.
Although their $7 mil CEO could have found a way to handle this while not running afoul of the IRS, but she decided to play with a bunch of dead-end commercial endeavors instead. So that's on them.
Describing Mozilla's derailment as "charitable activities" is like describing the Mexican cartels as "self-help groups".
Never forget their "We need more than deplatforming".
Pretty sure that community project will get overwhelmingly big donations from all over.
Software don't need AI-hyping 6 million dollar swallowing CEO's
They were doing fine as a business under Eich, whatever you think of him. They make over $500M just from their search box - and frankly, that is way more than you need to make a fantastic browser. And Thunderbird.
Baker took home over $7M a year for the past six years, and though she stepped down as CEO, we don't know if they even cut her pay, or what the other top tier salaries are [1]. Mozilla is a "open" company, but they announced that they will "not be disclosing salaries" after Baker stepped down.
Kagi makes a browser with 35 employees and ~200K inn sales. And I know, they are not building from scratch - but neither is FF at this point. It is ridiculous to suggest that Mozilla will go under if they don't become spyware.