Well, no one (sane) has any illusions left about chrome.
But FF was supposed to remain the shiny counterexample (despite acting also shady since years).
But FF was supposed to remain the shiny counterexample (despite acting also shady since years).
Personally, even though my trust in Firefox (and especially Mozilla) has been eroding rapidly in recent years, it's still so much greater than what I have for Google and Chrome that it's not even a choice.
Therefore, I agree with GP that this rhetoric is exhausting.
Bringing up the issues with FF and Mozilla is important and deserves attention. This kind of misleading FUD is not and does not.
To be fair, OP asked if "Chrome-ish" is the only option, i.e. Chromium-based browsers - not Chrome itself.
Even so, I don't think the implication is that Chromium is better than Firefox, but that without Firefox only Chromium-based browsers remain. "If I don't want to use Firefox, is it really only Chrome-clones available?"