Google Lens integration is only enabled if you have Google as your default search engine, iirc. And Perplexity is just another search engine choice you can pick (completely agree they should have NEVER have been added, though, due to their atrocious privacy and security practices). While I think they should have prioritized more privacy preserving options instead of this, it’s mostly just small convenience stuff for some people.
And while I very much dislike their recent focus on cloud-based AI/LLM-driven features, they are all optional and very easily avoided/disabled.
Partitioning use cases like this is great for privacy and security, I agree with that. But like @ddsn said, most people don’t want to use multiple browsers. I say this as someone that helps friends and family configure things. Hell, I’ve had difficulty convincing people to even try a different browser.
I also agree with @fria, they made a lot of privacy features, and some of them, like a new profile management UI that’s easily discoverable and usable, or CRLite by default for everyone, were pretty recent. Completely discarding Firefox is a bad idea IMO, even while considering Mozilla’s (glaring) mistakes. There are barely any decent browsers as it is.
I just wish they had executives that actually cared.