Not only that, but it fails to recognize how much money Google has 'wasted' on projects they went on to kill off. They have quite a reputation for it. Google just has a lot more money to 'waste' on research.

Are you confusing the not for profit mozilla foundation and the for profit mozilla corporation here ?

The foundation had engaged in tax evasion over the money raised through the corporation and ended up settling with the IRS by paying a $1.5 millions fine[1], they had provisioned $15 millions for this fine, suddenly they got a few unexpected millions to spend on whatever.

I agree that comparing mozilla to google makes little sense as mozilla was working for google in exchange for 85-95% of their revenue. Without google paying mozilla for their users privacy, mozilla would have had to find an actual business model and would not have had the option to wander away from their core product.

On the other hand, without mozilla google would have been mostly the same though would have probably missed some data about millions of users .

[1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-gets-lucky-settles-irs-aud...

Is there a difference? Is there a reason we say Google and not ABC?

The seperation is purely legal and financial, no?

To your last question, yes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15409217