It’s a very different browser, but I used it as an example because I think it’s much better than Firefox and Chrome.

Mozilla could have made Brave, they didn’t. Brave is simpler, but better, I think, and even more so shows off how Mozilla’s values aren’t in making awesome software, but in something else.

I largely ignore the weird Brave blockchain thing and just use it as a nice, simple browser.

Are you suggesting that Mozilla should have made a chromium skin instead of an actual browser? So far as I can see the only thing meaningful brave offers over chromium is adblocking on mobile which is indeed huge but also available on mobile Firefox. Meanwhile Mozilla has given us rust, servo, and and an addon ecosystem that is still more powerful and flexible than chrome even post giving old school addons the ax.

I don’t think Mozilla should have Brave per se, but it shows some of the work they could have done.

If they had to literally skin chrome to do then I guess they could. But they should be capable of so much more.

Specially Brave is faster to launch and uses less resources than Firefox and had privacy and ad blocking features turned on by default. I particularly like the little bug that shows you how much bloat it’s blocked.

Adblocking out of the box would be hard given that most of mozillas ad money comes from search partners which are at root ad companies. They still advertise adblockers like ublock origin among their recommended addons and enabling adblocking is 30 seconds work and with sync it will be automatically added to firefox as soon as you sign into sync.

Ultimately this money is what has enabled Mozilla to exist at all. Brave is living on borrowed money from presumed future revenue from its cryptocurrency scheme which may or may not come to fruition.

Then they are putting themselves against their customers.

They could still just get search placement and make tons and tons of money, enough to develop their browser.