Yes, but not super directly. You increase the market share of chromium based browsers, meaning websites will focus on supporting those browsers, which will make people switch to them to get websites working better. This is all very large scale, it's complicated.
What happened to brave?
Nothing happened, it's just always been chromium
So using chromium based browsers, even if privacy focused, still benefit Google?
Yes, but not super directly. You increase the market share of chromium based browsers, meaning websites will focus on supporting those browsers, which will make people switch to them to get websites working better. This is all very large scale, it's complicated.
Wasn't always, it had it's own engine very early
It was Electron, which is chromium :P