Being in a country that was the last holdout for Firefox (majority usage) before it was also taken over by Chrome, I know that several others as well as I have issues with Mozilla. Personally, I've always used Firefox, without exception, and stayed with XUL, rather than switch to their new browser, as add-ons are the most important part of a browser for me. I don't care if one is half a second faster or not.
Not to mention that stuff like stupid redesigns of logos as well as the Pocket issue made me basically lose all trust in Mozilla. Privacy is a huge deal here after all. Those who switched regularly complain about design issues (apparently the desktop browser is becoming somewhat "mobile-like") and most recently the address bar problem which upset everyone except for one person who didn't care about that. (Meanwhile, I'm happy with my address bar being my address bar and my search bar (being just right of it) being my search bar.[1]) If you would ask the people still using Firefox here whether they would recommend it...they would most likely say "no" but then would go on that while it isn't good, the alternatives aren't either.
So the question of change in direction (which is obviously there) regarding Firefox begs the question which people they are actually targeting? It's certainly not your average Joe because Firefox will never be able to out-Google Google. They are also annoying the more advanced users who just want privacy as well as useful things (add-ons, proper baked-in features etc) with their shenanigans, so it can't be them either. The only people I see actually celebrating new releases all the time (regardless of negative changes) are the crowd on HN. So, to me, it seems like they are targeting some kind of tech bubble (no offense) while basically ignoring the users out there. This is, of course, also reflected in them continuously losing marketshare while all the back-patting is happening.
Mozilla has to target the mass market or they won't survive. They certainly have to target people who, unlike you, care about performance more than anything else, since that's most of the market. You can argue it's hopeless but you can't expect them just to give up, nor should they.
Not to mention that stuff like stupid redesigns of logos as well as the Pocket issue made me basically lose all trust in Mozilla. Privacy is a huge deal here after all. Those who switched regularly complain about design issues (apparently the desktop browser is becoming somewhat "mobile-like") and most recently the address bar problem which upset everyone except for one person who didn't care about that. (Meanwhile, I'm happy with my address bar being my address bar and my search bar (being just right of it) being my search bar.[1]) If you would ask the people still using Firefox here whether they would recommend it...they would most likely say "no" but then would go on that while it isn't good, the alternatives aren't either.
So the question of change in direction (which is obviously there) regarding Firefox begs the question which people they are actually targeting? It's certainly not your average Joe because Firefox will never be able to out-Google Google. They are also annoying the more advanced users who just want privacy as well as useful things (add-ons, proper baked-in features etc) with their shenanigans, so it can't be them either. The only people I see actually celebrating new releases all the time (regardless of negative changes) are the crowd on HN. So, to me, it seems like they are targeting some kind of tech bubble (no offense) while basically ignoring the users out there. This is, of course, also reflected in them continuously losing marketshare while all the back-patting is happening.
[1] https://abload.de/img/address-search3hjh4.png