References are many:
https://kylemistele.medium.com/stealing-saved-browser-passwo...
https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Use+Your+Browser+Internal+Passwor...
https://www.cyberark.com/resources/threat-research-blog/extr...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/redline-malwa...
1. Password reuse, where a relatively unimportant account (shopping site) getting cracked gives the attacker the same password you used for a critical account (email).
2. Phishing, where you enter your password on a fake login page.
3. Lost device, where someone finding it can easily impersonate you on any site you're logged into.
A password manager handles (1), and if it auto-fills reliably on websites (as Chrome's does) that handles (2) as well. For (3) you want disk encryption, which is now standard on phones and is an easy option on laptops as well.
After these, my next concern would be compromise of the cloud-based password backups. Here is where your parent's comment on Google's security is relevant: Google (disclosure: I used to work there) has an excellent security team and there are few companies I would trust more to keep cloud vaults secure.
The attacks your links are talking about start by assuming someone has full access to your computer. While putting some bumps in their way at this point is nice, I guess, there's nothing stopping them from keylogging their way past any password manager you choose.
Yes, if someone installs malware on your machine (in your user account), they can grab the Chrome password vault. But in that case, 99% of the time they will be grabbing the password vault of other providers as well.
Also, note that the Chrome password vault is encrypted on disk.
I use a portal for work, and enabled MFA. Every time I put my MFA PIN in, it tries to replace the stored password. If I let it, accidentally, there is no history of the old password.
2nd example. When I was looking for a job, lots of companies seem to use a similar job/HR portal (workday) that has some variant of portal.company.com. Chrome things these are all the same, so to store the passwords; I have to replace the old one, which loses it and again there is no history...
you wont just lose your email and bookmarks but all your passwords... Also its a much bigger surface area target, and the auto syncing to new machines you sign into is a concern. I dont want passwords to be "accidentally synced" to any machine my family signs into. I want them to knowingly sync their passwords to them. be MINDFUL of what they're doing. no thank you.
As the default administrator/CTO of the family I'd rather suggest bitwarden and safer practices.
I've used 1Password for several years now. A couple years after I started using it, I upgraded to the family plan and got my wife into it. Granted, she's not elderly, but she's not exactly confident about technology. I was able to get her pretty comfortable with it in about two weeks. Now, we can easily share credentials with each other for things like Netflix or certain accounts we've set up for our kids by just putting them in our shared vault.
Im sure if I was trying to get my grandma to use it, she wouldn't get it, but in my experience 1Password at least is accessible to the non-techies among us.
It suggests (relatively) strong passwords, it discourages password re-use, it surfaces when you use passwords that have been found in a data breach, and it allows you to access these passwords across devices.
I have no idea about the cryptographic strength of Chromes's offerings, but the fact that it is the leading browser worldwide means that it's going to be dead-simple for most people to adopt, even those who are decidedly non-technical.
(Personally, I use Bitwarden and 1Password, but I'm a software engineer. I would not expect my elderly family members to do the same, especially because both involve installing and maintaining browser extensions that can be finicky when Chrome updates.)