> did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it?
I have all telemetry and Nightly studies enabled wherever I can (unfortunately the option is unavailable in custom builds, and I use custom builds on my main OS, since I contribute code to Firefox occasionally).
> removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI
I never understood the whole "dumbing down" thing either. It's fundamentally the same UI as it was in Firefox 2.0 back in the day, except the menus are more well-structured (there's now a convenient hamburger rather than everything being in a crowded "application menu" bar at the top).
> I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser
I think it's still all these things. But to make growth possible, they need to somehow fight against Google persistently advertising Chrome right on the fucking google dot com main page (and YouTube and so on).
I have all telemetry and Nightly studies enabled wherever I can (unfortunately the option is unavailable in custom builds, and I use custom builds on my main OS, since I contribute code to Firefox occasionally).
> removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI
I never understood the whole "dumbing down" thing either. It's fundamentally the same UI as it was in Firefox 2.0 back in the day, except the menus are more well-structured (there's now a convenient hamburger rather than everything being in a crowded "application menu" bar at the top).
> I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser
I think it's still all these things. But to make growth possible, they need to somehow fight against Google persistently advertising Chrome right on the fucking google dot com main page (and YouTube and so on).