great. let them use Chrome then. FF was strong in customization. I don't care if site refresh takes 20ms or 50ms - I can't notice.
I do care very much if you break all of my current extensions and as a result the UI behavior I was used to is gone. It's like being forced to switch to a completely new browsers. If I wanted different browser I could have switched to Chrome years ago, thank you very much. Customization is much more important than speed.
Obviously it's not, since the majority of Firefox user base (which used to be very high) jumped to Chrome 5-10 years ago, despite the first having customizations (add-ons) and the latter not yet (and when it added, incompatible ones).
In fact, by mozilla's own estimates (based on telemetry), only about 33% or so of their users even use add-ons.
sigh... should have ended that sentence with "for me", but I thought that it was clear enough that the entire paragraph is about my preferences, not talking about users in general.
still - as you wrote, folks who cared about speed jumped the ship already. Honestly, I don't believe they're coming back, just because FF's speed is now comparable to Chrome.
> In fact, by mozilla's own estimates (based on telemetry), only about 33% or so of their users even use add-ons.
alternatively: advanced users that tend to use add-ons also happen to be those who know how to disable telemetry.
Millions of people who've switched to Chrome. Including hundreds that have said as much in HN comments over the last 5 years.