I don't think so. There's many more ways and decisions they could have gotten away with to make Firefox worse without outright killing it, that they haven't done (yet).
Rather, I think it's more likely that Firefox, the browser application, is a bit of an albatross to the Mozilla foundation. Something they begrudgingly have to live with, at least in the short term. It's their organization's 'product', but to a certain layer of leadership and above, it's just another vehicle for their broader mission which could be accomplished much easier by just being a chrome fork instead. It'd also remove the need to hire and retain so many pesky and annoying engineers.
Such that the Mozilla corp. is something they have to keep around, but definitely not something they want to keep around.
It is an attractive way of rationalizing the astonishing and bewildering decision making at Mozilla.
I don't think so. There's many more ways and decisions they could have gotten away with to make Firefox worse without outright killing it, that they haven't done (yet).
Rather, I think it's more likely that Firefox, the browser application, is a bit of an albatross to the Mozilla foundation. Something they begrudgingly have to live with, at least in the short term. It's their organization's 'product', but to a certain layer of leadership and above, it's just another vehicle for their broader mission which could be accomplished much easier by just being a chrome fork instead. It'd also remove the need to hire and retain so many pesky and annoying engineers.
Such that the Mozilla corp. is something they have to keep around, but definitely not something they want to keep around.
It is an attractive way of rationalizing the astonishing and bewildering decision making at Mozilla.