Hi Tim, welcome to HTC 
Yeah, the Google sponsoring is bad, along with some other things. Some recent design decisions are also not all received that well (like ads in address bar suggest). They need to get rid of Google relationship (who benefit from having Mozilla around as ācompetitorā to get regulators off their back).
Basing a business model off of donations is a very hard call, though. And Mozilla, instead of focusing on the browser as their core product, wants to be broadly positioned in the field of Internet Health. What doesnāt help is that some of their employees have quite high salaries. Most notably the CEO. I heard a recent number, but canāt find the source now. In this article they mention Mitchell Baker earning $2.4m in 2018 (!!).
You are also on Fediverse. Today I posted about the forks I may be moving to: LibreWolf or Waterfox (and maybe with Syncthing to sync bookmarks, if that works).
Update: Hereās a Fediverse Poll asking which fork of Firefox people are interested in using:
Update2: I forgot to mention that Mozilla does have opportunities to get some more independent revenue, like monetizing their VPN product (which is based on Mullvad), but they donāt seem keen on grabbing such opportunities.
Update3: I was just notified by @spoon that Waterfox has been acquired by System1, and advertising agency. That makes it an immediate no-go for me, and I wouldnāt recommend anyone use it.
Spoon also recommended hardening Firefox setting with user.js which sits also on Awesome Humane Tech curated list.