It is shocking to me how many people on Lemmy hate Firefox
Although some people are Google fanbois or reactionary dumbasses, I think most of what you're misinterpreting as "Firefox hate" is actually love for Firefox and hate for what Mozilla has done to it.
Most Firefox-critics' feelings towards it are more like this:
Consider that many of the same people think of Arch as a viable daily driver distro for the everyman. Some folks are more accepting of jank than others.
this does mystify me. only time I nearly dropped firefox was when they did the big change that broke add ons but firefox with the addons I like is the best browser for me. nothing they have done has been consequentially bad. philosophically maybe but the actual effect is not bad compared to any other options.
For the money they are (were I guess) handed to set that it’s clearly worth it.
Not disagreeing with you. I just want to point out that Google is probably deliberately "overpaying" on this Mozilla deal, because they want to keep Firefox afloat, because they don't want to catch a court ruling that they are monopolizing the browser market too.
Dirty tricks with web browsers is the antitrust charge that actually caught Microsoft in the 90s.
I always got the opposite impression: people here love Firefox. But it seems that's part of why they're critical of its shortcomings.
At least for me, if I'm criticizing something, it probably means I care at least a little bit about whatever I'm criticizing. Not worth time talking about things I actually dislike.
Don't you think they dabbled on stupid projects and acquired some companies like pocket precisely because just a browser wasn't enough to pay the bills?