With the most recent changes in Firefox, it is definitionally malware.

That it sends a list of all files downloaded to Google is nothing but pure malware behavior.

It forces updates even when you tell it not to by installing some outside-the-browser update service, just as other malware does.

It hides vital features necessary for controlling it and preventing its privacy violations, just as other malware does.

While perhaps not as bad as other malware out there, if it fits the definition, that’s what it is.

Note that Firefox used to be my favorite software; I’d evangelize it to anyone who’d listen, and probably got several dozen if not several hundred people to switch to it.

No longer.