It's even worse than IE was in it's day. At least IE back then was just a monopoly and not also a giant spy machine for an ad empire.

No, it's objectively not worse, you can compile Chromium yourself and remove any features you don't want, something you were never able to do with IE.

Chrome != Chromium. The vast majority of the planet is using Chrome, not Chromium. Most average joes have no idea about Chromium.

Either way, whether you're using Chromium or Chrome, you're still entrenching Google's monopoly over the web.

Like the sibling said, the problem was IE's monopoly itself not the lack of more IE-based variants which wouldn't have helped at all, the same way how Chromium isn't helping counter Google's monopoly.

I don't think not having enough versions of IE was ever a problem. The problem starts when everyone builds their app to a platform that is very dominant and controlled by people who's interest are not always aligned with the user's interests.

You don't have to compile Chromium to have a browser incompatible with the websites that people build for Chrome, you can just use Firefox or Safari or write your own browser if you want to have a web browser that won't be able to run Microsoft Teams.

IE held back the development of the WWW. That would be the spot Safari has today. What Chrome is doing is much worse, since it is strangling the web, not just holding back new features.

Not true at all, IE what is the most innovative browser until it wasn’t. For example They invented Ajax, One of the core technologies that made the web what it is today.

They invented ActiveX object and the accompanying XmlHttpRequest that AJAX would later morph into, and then change the X part (XML) to JSON.

While it was innovative, I would argue it's made the Web worse, given the impact of Javascript and surveillance on the Web.