Speaking purely for the layman end-user, it would appear a strange decision to abruptly abandon Firefox for GNOME Web. Yes, I am aware just how easy it us to run "su -c 'yum install firefox'," but not all unfortunate end-users are able, and I suspect the move would generate a great deal of bad publicity and FUD on the eye-rolling review sites.

There is no need to use the command line to install a new app. Anyone can easily install Firefox if they really want/need it.

For some reason I'm obligated to kill Epiphany every time after I close it (the process lingers?) and the compatibility issues are a little irksome (Google Images, for example, refuses completely to give my its modern continuously-scrolling interface).

This is a bit of FUD. GNOME Web stable (3.12) already fixed these (and others) problems. And also has brought some big improvements.

I would appreciate more exposure for GNOME Web, but shipping it by default might not attract the right audience for that. And I don't quite understand how Fedora contributing to Firefox "instead of" GNOME Web is the wrong direction, if anyone could expand on that for me? 

I don't think that give preference to a program that still uses old technologies (GTK 2, GStreamer 0.10) and that "supports/promotes" closed technologies (patented codecs, Flash, DRM) is exactly according to the Fedora "mission".

Especially when the upstream already have many resources but doesn't seem to give much importance to the platform on which Fedora is based (or to Fedora itself).

But this is just, you know, my opinion.