Easy to confuse stupidity with malice. They're chasing one thing and one thing only: the almighty dollar. Look at it through that lens and their actions make sense. For the rest of us though, that's just stupid.

Mozilla, Thunderbird, and/or the EFF,

Do you know that donation to Mozilla don't (and can't legally) fund Firefox development, right? (opposite to what happens for Thunderbird, actually).

But, hey, you can guarantee Mozilla's CEO a better retirement:

Thus, your money are better spent donating to Thunderbird or EFF or whatever other foundation that does something actually useful.

It's not doing something dumb. It's another power grab. We passed the stage where giving the benefit of the doubt is a reasonable thing to do well over a decade ago.

How can the smartest people be so dumb?

Who are you talking about exactly? Because I doubt that everyone working at google knows everything thats going on, even while working on it.

I wonder how much of the money would go to the creators themselves rather than YouTube though. I'd rather use adblock and give money directly through patreon or something. Fuck Google.

Most 9-5s are dumb as fuck

For more effective to join their patrons, even if it is just a one time donation.