You’re right, but Socraticly speaking, then why are there so many blink-based browsers and so few gecko-based ones? The answer is because blink is easy to embed in a new project and gecko isn’t.
If Mozilla really wants to take back the web (and I honestly don’t think they actually do), then what they should really be doing is making gecko as easy to embed in a new browser as blink is. They don’t do this, and I suspect that they have ulterior motives for doing so, but if they did, I think we would be much closer to breaking chrome’s grasp on the web.
Because let’s face it: Mozilla makes a pretty damn good browser engine. But they don’t really make a compelling browser based off it. Ever noticed how Mozilla has been declining ever since they deprecated XPCOM extensions? It’s because when they provided XPCOM, it enabled users to actually build cool and interesting new features. And now that they’ve taken it away, all innovation in browser development has stagnated (save for the madlads making Vivaldi).
They need to empower others to build the browser that they can’t. That’s what would really resurrect the glory days of Firefox in my opinion.
People are quick to assume this, and there’s a very good chance that they’re right, but I don’t think we should take it as a given. It’s always possible that there could be some sort of court decision that allows Google to keep funding Mozilla after the “breakup” is complete.
In any case, we don’t yet know what the outcome of the antitrust case will be, so I think it might be best to avoid making statements of certainty like this until we see how things really shake out.
We should definitely take the possibility of this happening very seriously though.