The thing costing Firefox users is the billion-dollar advertising push and heavy promotion on Google properties. That won’t be changed by trying to satisfy a small number of critics who are not exactly jumping to contribute significant effort to the project, whereas the Mozilla team inevitably has solid answers about maintenance costs bashing their decisions.
* References:
1. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-suckfest.html
2. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-disable-australi...
3. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-directory-tiles....
[Edit (fixing link)]: 4. https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-addons-future.ht...