That thing is so minuscule and more of an everyday feature that I really don't see all the fuss about it.
Also, it is a game theory "both would lose if stopped" situation with google, so no, google has no way to affect Mozilla directly. If they were to stop it, Firefox might stop being developed and Google definitely gets sued, and it is basically free money for Firefox, setting the default search engine is no big deal.
That thing is so minuscule and more of an everyday feature that I really don't see all the fuss about it.
Also, it is a game theory "both would lose if stopped" situation with google, so no, google has no way to affect Mozilla directly. If they were to stop it, Firefox might stop being developed and Google definitely gets sued, and it is basically free money for Firefox, setting the default search engine is no big deal.