[rjf72]

I think that ship has pretty much sailed, but in either case that has nothing to do with Firefox's decision. If they wanted to use Google, for whatever reason, they could do so while supporting user privacy by piping it through e.g. Startpage.

They just want the Google $$$, privacy be damned.

[BrendanEich]

I won't violate any NDA still binding me to Mozilla by agreeing that the default search deal in Mozilla is and historically has been done for funding the company. If they wanted to switch, they could -- but it would hurt financially, big time. That could imperil the project as a whole. It would definitely limit salaries at the top.