The thing is that most of this is invisible to people who already live within Google’s bubble which is probably why they don’t get called out for it. The promotion is visible mostly to those of us who don’t, and it gets irritating.
Chrome was better than competition pretty much all its lifetime and there's plenty of historic articles to prove it, no matter how much your emotions refuse to accept the history.
We were there and we didn't install Chrome via some made up toolbar installer, but because it was significantly better than what Mozilla and Internet Explorer offered.
https://www.osnews.com/story/25184/adobe-tricks-users-into-d...
https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201...
https://forum.filezilla-project.org/viewtopic.php?style=246&...
> nearly 10 % of the installers came with a third-party browser (e.g. Chrome)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016740481...