It seems all but inevitable. Regardless of the technical feasibility of keeping your own browser engine going, much of the missions of the foundation and overal

It seems all but inevitable. Regardless of the technical feasibility of keeping your own browser engine going, much of the missions of the foundation and overall company do not really depend on having a truly separate browser at all. If anything, it is an albatross around the necks of the groups and management that care more about the 'mission' of an open web and the advocacy and other programs that are largely unrelated to the Firefox browser, and certainly don't require the browser to be its own thing rather than a chromium fork. For the short and medium term goals, a browser is just another tool and vehicle for pushing their vision for the future of the web... But it's an extremely expensive and difficult tool with comparatively little short and medium term importance. So why keep it? You don't need a 'real' browser to put up surveys or blog posts, or to attend or run conferences, or to join web working groups or participate in RFCs. Not having to pay for almost any engineers or teams for something the rest of the foundation could categorize as a pyrrhic project? That would be simply wonderful, I'm sure. Vasselization simply makes more sense in the foreseeable future.