| I boggled over this particular obvious problem for years. But I don't recall Firefox ever being hardcore security and privacy (even though some of their techies are). For Mozilla, that's a fairly recent positioning that they're growing into. Initially, there was competition to be the most popular browser. But most of the history is a constant movement towards having the browser facilitate what companies wanted to do towards users (moving away from the "user agent" as an agent of the user). In parallel, Google paying Mozilla for placement, and then possibly to keep a nominal competitor alive. In recent years, Mozilla has been positioning itself as one of the champions for Internet freedom, and I assume that some of their people were that all along (e.g., the kind who could've gone to Google, but chose to work for much less money at Mozilla). Though I don't know how genuine that sentiment is from the top, when leadership draws huge compensation, for poor performance, while laying off techies. (Techies traditionally have lead Internet freedom, from the ground, up, and leadership might be better thought of as a humble support system for that.) |