That was completely expected. You give any company monopoly over anything and they will abuse it. This was Chrome dominating browser market. Microsoft did it with IE back in the day. Now Google is doing it again.

Librewolf

Finally un-installed chrome on Windows.

Is this enough to remove traces?

2. Go to this location: C:\Users\YOUNAME\AppData\Local\Google
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\
3. And delete that "Chrome" folder (for both location, if there is a Chrome folder)

https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/29816481/how-do-i-fully-uninstall-chrome?hl=en

bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

It has always been a user-tracking platform but it is getting worse

Does disabling this as described in the article truly disable it, meaning if you do, after Chrome blocks 3rd party cookies late next year (assuming they follow through on that), you won't be tracked by either?

Who could have possibly have forseen that a company that makes nearly all of its revenue from data mining and advertising would one day use a popular software tool as a means of data mining and advertising. This is like wheels-within-wherls thinking right here.

nuked that shit from my machine.

only going to use it inside a VM now for testing purposes

Do no evil

Chrome is for the surveillance state

I already use Firefox for everything that's not literally for my D&D stuff. Because some relevant fan sites don't display properly on Firefox for some stupid reason. That's it. So even if they manage to get past my blockers, they literally are telling me nothing I will ever care about because I already have/know where to get any relevant thing those ads might be shilling, and the rest is all irrelevant noise.

In regards to the argument that google pays firefox and could easily kill it off I doubt it. Even if they were so bold as to cut funding completely (which they are not) you will find that Mozilla will have at some point have to cut loose their CEO or cut their huge pays down and make some changes there followed by some clever moves to find another source of income. If worse comes to worse the community will come to its aid and it will go back into the hands of the community which is likely a very good thing but Google has another approach to all of this and are incrementally trying to lock firefox or any non compliant browser or competitor out of the internet. Google has been doing it for years now. They hijacked web standards also along the way.

I think people are either forgetting the roots of chrome or how it came about as being PUP and foistware bundled along with popular freeware software or anyone they could pay to bundle their software with but earlier than that it was a toolbar that piggybacked onto IE (for its marketshare) and than I believe even Firefox too. People also seem to have this belief that when Chrome came out it was absolutely revolutionary and brilliant but the truth is that it was garbage but people fell for it like a shark to a bucket of chum. To me Chrome was pretty much your Bonzi Buddy of browsers. And google a complete scourge on the internet.

As for webkit that old chestnut. The only reason why that is popular at all is because Apple makes sure that you cannot use any other browser or makes it as difficult as possible not to mention the largest part of their user base comes from their iphone without that they're pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. IMO Yes, Google is just as bad if not worse in many cases as they leverage their android phone market, run ads on TV specifically designed to push chrome and also built an entire laptop (all be it a terrible one) and called it a chromebook to make sure they keep their dominance but lets not also forget they bought youtube also to stack the odds in their favor. Same ol' Google really.

The browser wars are dead! We just settle for the lesser evil these days.

Saying that this is better for your privacy is like saying I only get punched in the face every second day rather than every day now.

Taking all of the above away and if there is one reason fewer people should be using chrome or chromium based browsers and using something else such as Firefox or a fork is to maintain a balance and take away some of the power and influence they (Google) do have over the web so they will not be able to force things such as WEI and take away many of the freedoms from the net in which we grew up on as too did the internet. The Freedom of exchange of information was never meant to be conditional or the internet held to ransom by one company but this is where we are at so its time for a change of hands or a the balance of power to be restored. Bringing balance will also force sloppy and lazy web developers to stop build dirt poor websites and deliberately blocking out other browsers. Web standards need to be restored and be completely independent from one entity or another, be it google, Mozilla, Apple or any one else in between.