alt Hacker NewsCare to explain how would they get the money in the process you described? Selling privacy to Google or someone is the only money maker they have.
There is no reason to believe manager pay is even 10% of the total expense.
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Mozilla took in the money from the distant past all the way into the present. They have leaned into privacy the whole time, while not being perfect.
At some point they ease off the google money or it goes away itself. And they move forward on privacy.
Google was less demanding in the past as well; they continue to give Apple billions each year.
There are a number of privacy-oriented business models, as listed here: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/status.html - while not as lucrative as some, combined with an endowment its a good living that many companies would envy.
Google (currently) pays Mozilla $400-500 million a year to be the default search engine in firefox.
edit: in 2023 they took in $653M in total, $555M of which was from Google. They spent $260M on software development, and $236M on other things.