HN doesn't want firefox to go away. HN wants firefox to be better, more privacy/security focused, and to stop trying to copy chrome out of the misguided hope that being a poor imitation will somehow make it more popular.

Sadly, mozilla is now an adtech company (https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...) and by default firefox now collects your data to sell to advertisers. We can expect less and less privacy for firefox users as Mozilla is now fully committed to trying to profit from the sale of firefox users personal data to advertisers.

HN wants Firefox but with better stewardship and fewer misdirected funds.

Mozilla - wrongly - believes that the majority of FF users believe in Mozilla's hobby projects rather than that they care about their browser.

That's why - as far as I know - to this day it is impossible to directly fund Firefox. They'd rather take money from google than to be focusing on the one thing that matters.

Particularly weird impulse for technically inclined people…

Although I must admit to the guilty pleasure of gleefully using Chromium-only features in internal apps where users are guaranteed to run Edge.