Exactly. This helps the quiet majority, and the people who would turn it off are also those who would block ads anyway. So the majority gets a privacy bump, and those who hate ads get what they've always gotten.
I honestly don't see the issue here.
If Firefox blocked all ads by default, why would a website bother making any accomodations for Firefox? The number of "broken" websites would go up and Firefox users would get even more frustrated. If the quiet majority, who are okay with ads, leave because websites are broken, the rest of us are worse off.
On the flip side, if Firefox is able to broker a deal where privacy is respected so some of the privacy community disable ad-blockers (probably another quiet majority), that's a net win for advertisers because they're getting access to a demographic they otherwise wouldn't. Firefox could take a share of the profits as well, which provides another revenue stream apart from search, meaning Firefox is more independent.
I honestly don't see the issue with PPA. It sounds:
- good for users - more privacy
- good for advertisers - more people seeing ads
- meh for anti-ads people - ad-blockers can still block these ads, or you can disable the feature
- good for Firefox - privacy win + more revenue streams
That's exactly the thing Firefox should be doing, finding a way to increase privacy while making itself more independent from Google search revenue.