Like Firefox, Waterfox wants people’s attention since their default search engine is paid for by the company that bought them a few months ago https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-has-joined-system1/ – System1 https://system1.com is specialized in advertising. Basically they are buying small search engines or browsers to inject their own search engines into them as default. Yes, anyone can fork this project since it is Open Source. Yes anyone can change the default search engine. But yes, Waterfox is trade-based since they clearly want people’s attention. Else they would have chosen the best search engine they know off, not one that is paid for. Don’t forget that for one search is an essential part of a browser, and second that most people probably do not know how or simply do not change their default search engine.