Since currently Lemmy is mostly made up of nerds, I'd like to know what browsers you use and why? You could just upvote the comment with your browser of choice if you don't want to explain.
An established foundation with good interests and goals running it (unfortunately it's not quite that clear cut - but the best, closest). The source of free software development. Extensive feature set. Robustness.
I haven't seen the need to use a fork, and like and prefer the idea of using and supporting the one that's investing in the engine development - even if it's largely only through free use. (Using forks does not support them this way.)
When briefly using chrome dev tools I've always preferred and went back to Firefox dev tools for web development.
Sharing my data with an independent org like Mozilla feels much better and safer than with Google. The services are free software and could be replaced if it ever need be. Still, Mozilla is big enough to expect stability across time.
Tech wise there's not much difference between the three big players Firefox, Chrome, and Edge.
If it weren't Firefox I'd feel more comfortable with Edge than Chrome.
If Firefox isn't available, the next best choice would probably be de-googled Chromium (note that Chromium is not necessarily fully de-googled by default) or Safari. Edge is just Chrome plus Microsoft.
I think Edge still has a bunch of the Google telemetry, though. But I could be wrong - I haven't looked into it because Firefox exists. Firefox also has some Google telemetry kinda stuff by default, just in case you didn't know - you have to disable it (or bear with it because you want the features)
That's always the trade-off - convenience, or privacy? It seems that we live in a world where we can't really get both, and everyone has their personal preference on where that line should be drawn.