If you have ideas for alternative sources of funding for Mozilla to pay its programmers and other staff without relying so heavily on Google money for their organization's existence, I'm sure they'd like to hear about it.
They're trying to tackle the revenue issue on multiple fronts, including Mozilla VPN, a subscription "privacy pack" (that includes Mozilla VPN and upgraded versions of Firefox Relay and Firefox Monitor) and this.
I don’t mind them receiving funding from Google. It just seems like a poorly thought out way to raise funds. They receive 400-450 million /year from Google. Is this not enough to fund Firefox development adequately?
They're worried about what would happen if that funding were to disappear at some point (Google could choose not to renew the contract at any time and then Mozilla would have a huge problem). Part of leadership in a big organization is looking ahead and trying to mitigate potentially-catastrophic risks before they become actual problems.
Mozilla doesn't want the future of their entire organization to rest in the hands of Google, whose decisions they don't have control over (and who is also their main competitor).
But Google is funding them with... advertising money. Collected from your searches and search suggestions. I'm really unsure why reliance on Google is better than other options?
They're trying to tackle the revenue issue on multiple fronts, including Mozilla VPN, a subscription "privacy pack" (that includes Mozilla VPN and upgraded versions of Firefox Relay and Firefox Monitor) and this.