No they didn't. Ublock Origin Lite works fine in Chrome. Certainly they took strong adblocking capabilities away, but I can still browse the web on Chrome fairly ad free.

So… they took away Ublock Origin (and other “strong adblocking”) for the reason I said…?

No they didn't. Adguard works fine. Ublock has been dragging its feet, but that's on Ublock. Yes, I know, there were all those clickbait headlines. I saw them too, and people got super upset when you pointed out the clickbait and that adblockers would in fact still work. Well here we are, and lo, adblockers still work.

There's plenty enough of shitty things Google actually does and did, no point in inventing easily disprovable ones.

Mind you, the fact Google could change APIs further to actually prevent adblocking is on its own a sufficient reason to foster competing browsers, so let's perhaps focus on that.

The “strong capabilities” means tracking/fingerprinting prevention. So yeah you might not see ads but the ads see you.

The fact they can do this without pushback is pretty clear sign this will only continue.

I'm fine with ad people knowing that. I think people can overact a bit. I mean do you feel the need to wear a mask and disguise when going to shops and cafes in case the shops and cafes see where you go?

I'm not fine with that data collection at all. It's not even just about ad people, it's about the larger accumulation and sharing of data.

You said they banned adblockers. This is provably wrong, as there are still many working adblockers in the Chrome Store. They certainly reigned in what Adblockers are capable of doing and made it much easier for websites to bypass them etc in the future, but ban them they did not.