Could you provide some examples? That's a serious allegation.

I remember, as a volunteer, debating some privacy issue with a Google dev in Bugzilla. They made some crack about looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the discussion was out in the open. I don't recall evidence that Google was influencing Firefox improperly, but OTOH absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ...

I doubt people on the trenches were blatantly in on it. But I gave my views on the outcome. Investigate that and see the pattern.

Well, that's a cute line of defense, but pretty obvious if hand-waving if you ask me. "You're too low on the ladder to know what I'm talking about."

You're the one who accuses Mozilla and Google, of different things, sure, but fairly important things anyway.

The burden of proof lies with you. Not us. It is not up to us to "find the pattern."

Not that I disagree with you on the fact that Mozilla seems much better off, post-Google.

I think the more likely explanation is that Google withdrew* once it became clear that Chrome was far more popular. This same event led Mozilla to do some soul-searching (aka user surveys, etc.) as to why they were losing users, and what their USP was compared to Google - privacy is one of them.

* Note that "withdrew" might also mean "offered less money than before because Firefox had less users than before, and Yahoo! offering more.

I'd love to know how those corporate conversations go exactly. Is it so blatant as saying "no you won't work on these anti tracking features?" Or is it more "this will be so you focus on" which conveniently excludes undesirable stuff?

This. And, what is really Google paying them for? Ensuring that there is no mainstream browser left that would complicate things for ad/tracking sponsored web (and so never creating an incentive + ecosystem for any alternative)?