I still find the decision questionable. No embedding meant that Gecko missed out by default on the wave of embedded WebViews in the early smartphone era as well as the “desktop web stack” boom that Electron/CEF came to dominate.
Additionally, I believe that one of the reasons why Firefox has struggled to maintain market share is because it’s a bit of an acquired taste. Relative to Chrome, Safari, etc it’s kinda quirky and not to everybody’s liking. Alternative browsers wrapping Gecko could’ve helped a lot here.
Camino was a great example — Mozilla couldn’t justify building a Mac-specialized Firefox and that makes sense, so Camino filled that gap instead and became quite popular among Mac users. When Camino had to close up shop following the removal of embedding, most of those users didn’t switch to Firefox but instead to Chrome and Safari because those were better suited to their needs.
Additionally, I believe that one of the reasons why Firefox has struggled to maintain market share is because it’s a bit of an acquired taste. Relative to Chrome, Safari, etc it’s kinda quirky and not to everybody’s liking. Alternative browsers wrapping Gecko could’ve helped a lot here.
Camino was a great example — Mozilla couldn’t justify building a Mac-specialized Firefox and that makes sense, so Camino filled that gap instead and became quite popular among Mac users. When Camino had to close up shop following the removal of embedding, most of those users didn’t switch to Firefox but instead to Chrome and Safari because those were better suited to their needs.