Exactly where do firefox devs get their marketing research from that tells them what features their users would like to keep and which they'd like to remove or change? I'm sincerely curious because I never voted for this, never got a pop-up questionnaire even on a beta version that does marketing research and has Feedback capabilities (What you like and don't like), and yet the status bar was simply GONE with an update. Who makes these decisions and based on what data? The devs personal feelings or actual responses from users?!?!?
I now have an extension to replace the status bar (status4ever or some such thing) and another extension to replace the capability to set my minimum tab width -- which was also removed unceremoniously so one couldn't go to about:config and set it anymore. The devs received this as a BUG and replied with "It was never a feature... just a setting we removed and don't intend to put back." So, if there weren't an extension for me, I'd be scrolling forever to see my 40+ tabs open (on just one set of Tab Panorama tabs on a wide-screen monitor).
Why are features removed rather than made optional??? Extensions to get old functionality back are inferior b/c they aren't maintained by FF and could contain buggy or insecure code -- or end development suddenly.
Honestly, it's changes like these that send loyal users to Chrome. Chrome is minimalist + extensions to do what you want. Firefox has always been defaults for most users + lots of customizations + extensions if you need/want them. Firefox and Chrome target different market segments. If you strip out features and require people to get an extension to add the utility back... those people may as well switch to Chrome.
I'm already running Chrome half the time -- I'm testing it out preparing for what may be an inevitable transition to it from Firefox. Most of my friends, family, and co-workers use Chrome exclusively now.
In my opinion, Firefox can't hope to compete head-to-head with Chrome on speed, bug fixes, release dates, etc. etc. Google has far more resources. Firefox should instead target features (especially for power users), flexibility, and security while Google targets the average person that rarely has more than a few tabs open at a time. I'm not saying Firefox shouldn't stay competitive... but when someone asks "Why should I use Firefox instead of Chrome," one of my answers used to be that Firefox was very customizable... with lots of options and you could do about anything in about:config... it's just not true now. I'm still using an about:config option to let my "close tab" button remain on the far right rather than on each individual tab. When that option goes away forever (as I'm sure it will at this rate), I'll switch to Chrome -- unless I find another extension to add that back, too.