They are "remodulating" chrome. If you continue to use chrome and any browser based on it, you might soon realize that adblocking doesn't work anymore, because filtering support was neutered and you no longer will be able to switch to Firefox, as they will outright block it as it allows to block ads.
It is important to use Firefox now to make sure sites won't start blocking it.
Wanna bet? There are ways to frog in a boiling pot this. And chrome isn't the only browser that will support blocking Firefox. (They'll argue Chromium is not Google, only Chrome).
That's a fig leaf. US courts might agree with that argument, but European courts will see that it all is monopolistic practices to support their ad business. YouTube itself can't survive market dominance without it's preferential deals with it's parent company's hosting and ads. Ask viemo how using cloud hosting to serve video and third party ads works out. It would be suicidal. The truth is they ALREADY should be broken up.
Google likely will be one of the last ones to do it (exactly so it will be hard to to put them in court). I already see Microsoft (surprise!) do this and asking to use Chrome or Edge.
You say that but Google is working on shoving a drm scheme into Chrome that'd keep you from being able to modify sites (e.g. ad and script blocking) and, due to the sheer market share that chrome and Chromium-based browsers have, Google can kinda just do whatever they want. Of course, it's ultimately up to the site owners to implement it, but you know probably 90% of sites will use it.
Haha, I don't know enough about that fan theory to say I believe it or not but I will say no matter what, humans still stopped the Borg cube. Otherwise Earth would have gotten assimilated.