If Firefox was selling a physical product in a retail store, they would be able to watch you walk around the store on CCTV, see you avoided an aisle because there is a polar bear lurking, and then remove the polar bear.

But since the product is digital they just have to give it away blind? Never knowing if people even use the features or not?

>they would be able to watch you walk around the store on CCTV

That seems like an unfitting comparison. The problem doesn't arise in the store, but when using the product at home. The equivalent of store cctv in this comparison would rather be a server log on the Mozilla website (where people get the product). It's fine to do telemetrics there without me consenting (as long as it's only used by first party) if you ask me. But after I leave their premises it's none of their business how I use the product.

Sounds like you want it to be ok that your newly bought pack of condoms sends out a message to the factory once you open one.

Yes. Otherwise, would you accept your home/apartment to have telemetry so that the home builder knows what rooms/features you use or not?

Software isn't a house. It's also not a car or whatever your favourite other analogies are.

Software is often described as "tools" and so an analogy to a drill or a magnifying glass is as apt as any. In fact a car is a good analogy to a browser because we use browsers as sort of a "second home" in our computer and it allows us to "visit websites" and a browser is a whole ecosystem unto itself.

So if software is a tool and my drill is monitoring the holes I make in stuff and its efficacy in doing that, that seems fine, but if the drill is sitting in my toolbox being a busybody and sending back everything it can find about me from within the toolbox, that drill is made by assholes, don't you agree?

It asks you after every crash if you want to send the report back or not.

It does, but I think that's only for whether to send a detailed crash report (which could contain private data). I think (but haven't checked) that the "number of crashes" telemetry includes cases were you don't choose to allow it to send the full report.

And they ask about that general telemetry when you install the browser.

Why do you assume that private information was sent ? It could be something as simple as a "I crashed because of OoM" packet.

Not to mention that Firefox is open source, so you (and GDPR authorities) can check yourself what exactly is being sent...

Every telemetry will at least transmit users' IP address (by the nature of how requests are made), which is legally considered private information.

Even if that was not the case, a privacy respecting (any?) browser has no business sending any information from my machine, including "I crashed because of OoM" unless I explicitly allow it to do so.

Zero telemetry by default is the only acceptable standard for any browser that claims to be privacy respecting (which Firefox does).