Unless there are very significant differences that are noticeable to mass user base, the engine is not a relevant factor in browser market share. When chrome came charging in, Microsoft had let IE fall so far behind that even to my 74-year-old opa, chrome was noticeably better.
People largely don't choose firefox over non-degoogled chrome today. All browsers on iOS are reskinned safari with different accounts for synced bookmarks and tabs, and yet people choose to use different iOS browsers for various reasons, the browser's engine not among them.
It pains me to think about, but from a realpolitik perspective it makes zero sense for Mozilla not to slap an orange fox on chromium and call it a day,
For me, and everyone I know personally that uses Firefox, the primary motivation for using Firefox is because it uses a non webkit/blink engine, and we want browser diversity. If that goes away we there is a lot less reason for us to stick with Firefox.
Although I suopose there is still manifest v3...
I fear that if Firefox switched to webkit or blink, they might lose a significant number of existing users without a clear way to win back more.
People largely don't choose firefox over non-degoogled chrome today. All browsers on iOS are reskinned safari with different accounts for synced bookmarks and tabs, and yet people choose to use different iOS browsers for various reasons, the browser's engine not among them.
It pains me to think about, but from a realpolitik perspective it makes zero sense for Mozilla not to slap an orange fox on chromium and call it a day,