HN wants Firefox but with better stewardship and fewer misdirected funds.

Mozilla - wrongly - believes that the majority of FF users believe in Mozilla's hobby projects rather than that they care about their browser.

That's why - as far as I know - to this day it is impossible to directly fund Firefox. They'd rather take money from google than to be focusing on the one thing that matters.

I don't think that Mozilla believes that their pet projects are what the use community wants. I think they just don't care. Google's check will clear next year anyways.

That's probably true.