Brave defaults to Google in most countries, but we get paid $0 for it. We also disable auto-suggestions based on key by key tracking to Google as you type your search term, leaving it as an option some users choose to enable.

This isn't that hard (except for doing without the big bucks, which is hard: Brave is building up small revenue to large, not profitable yet -- again, we pay the user >= what we make, 70% of gross revenue for user-private ads, 15% for publisher partnered ads [not yet launched]).

I'm saddened that Google is the default. I hope Brave asks users in the future, but understand there are probably a few different goals being juggled whilst Brave grows.

I think that ship has pretty much sailed, but in either case that has nothing to do with Firefox's decision. If they wanted to use Google, for whatever reason, they could do so while supporting user privacy by piping it through e.g. Startpage.

They just want the Google $$$, privacy be damned.

I won't violate any NDA still binding me to Mozilla by agreeing that the default search deal in Mozilla is and historically has been done for funding the company. If they wanted to switch, they could -- but it would hurt financially, big time. That could imperil the project as a whole. It would definitely limit salaries at the top.