Genuine question: could Chromium survive and thrive without Google's support? As far as I'm aware, most Chromium contributions come from Google, so while it's technically open-source, Google is still very much in control of it.

This "you can use Chrome without Google tracking" is an illusion. Sure, right now, you can have ungoogled Chrome, but what happens a few years down the line when Firefox is dead and we only have one engine, mostly backed by a questionnable corp, to use the internet?