> They were losing because MS bundled IE with every device.
They weren't losing, they had 10x the market share they have now. MS lost an antitrust case, they weren't forced to do anything even after they lost, and big tech learned (correctly) that there was not ever going to be any serious antitrust enforcement on platforms.
Chrome came out with a heavily marketed browser that some people liked (but was far more marketed than loved.) Firefox then intentionally destroyed its own browser to make it a wonky clone of Chrome, even down to trivial cosmetic features and version numbering. Firefox's strength was its extensions ecosystem, so it took special relish in destroying that, and joy in painting the users that were bothered by this as stochastic terrorists. They claimed that the perpetual complainers just didn't understand the "normal users" of the market while Firefox shrunk from 30% of it to 2.5% of it. Meanwhile, they took to forcing bizarre, unhideable features that should have been extensions, and doing bizarre marketing experiments.
> Most internet users don't even use desktop/laptops, they use mobile devices and likely have no idea there is any other option than chrome.
Firefox gets all of its margin from Google, and is 2.5% of the market. There isn't really another option, no matter what Mehta says. Firefox gets more than all of its margin from Google - Google cash allows it to blow money on goofy money-losing projects that look good on resumes. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has 100x what it needs to run in the bank, entirely from donations, still keeps dishonestly begging, and still keeps collecting.
But Firefox claims that's impossible. It has to be fully dependent on Google because reasons, and those reasons are that it chooses its direction based on Google's desires.
edit: the craziest part of this common argument about Google bundling is that Google doesn't have anything like the monopoly that Microsoft had, Microsoft bound its browser to everything it could figure out how to, and Microsoft was still losing a huge section of the market to Firefox. The idea that Google is some special impossible challenge when Microsoft owned every computer is insane. It's impossible to beat Google when they pay your salary.