So I'm glad Chrome exists and I hope it continues to do so, but they're not moving in a direction that remotely interests me.

In any case competition is good. I don't think we'd benefit from a purely trident or webkit or gecko world.

I'm also a bit perturbed by the fact that Mozilla has always touted extensions as a key feature of Firefox... only to say you should disable them all if you want good performance.

Addons are loading arbitrary code into your browser though, so there is a potential for perf impact. We're looking at that too, with out-of-process addons (see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.3/dev...).

Addons don't in general hurt perf, but it is definitely possible for them to. Firebug, in particular, disables the JIT so it can debug it, making Javascript execution painfully slow, and thus the browser is slow too, since large parts are written in JS. Firebug isn't to blame though; we just haven't provided them with APIs to do better yet.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-d...

“We develop our product and technical direction as part of an open process unrelated to the search relationship with Google. We talk to Google about the parts of the product that offer Google services (i.e., the Firefox Start Page) and the services they provide, like anti-phishing. Otherwise Google does not have any special relationship to Mozilla project activities.”

Firefox 8.0.1 is really fast now it's 8.0.1 that's the best update they have done.

You can certainly do business with companies, while showing preference for an organization that shares your values whenever such an organization exists.

but thinking Mozilla values privacy because it is a non profit is not a great reason.

I think it is more that some people (including me) think Mozilla values privacy because they flat out say they do and then they have a consistent track record of supporting privacy. The fact they are non-profit does make it slightly easier to take their statements at face value, but it is their track record that really demonstrates it.

Mozilla's entire business model isn't based around getting to know you or you habits better. Google has an inherent and fundamental financial interest in being able to follow what you do browsing day to day.