This is exactly the point why I left Google Chrome back then and considered FF as a good alternative. I didn't trust Google anymore. But now I face the same problem again, because I don't want these "features and trusted partners". I also don't want to have to justify over and over again why I don't want them. I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust.
You can't trust any of them. The real question is, who do you trust more? Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, Brave. You can't trust any of them, but you have to pick one.
It's bad enough to have to instruct people how to disable the New Tab ads, now you have to add one more step. At this point it becomes pretty awkward:
"Don't use Chrome browsers, they don't respect your privacy and are bad for the web! Use Firefox instead. Oh but wait you have to disable integrated ads first, just do this and that and this and I swear it's fine!"
This is why I use Ungoogled Chromium and build it myself.