Correct, completely forked from Chromium (not Chrome) and in separate development. Brave continues to roll out superior features while the rest of the Chromium world lags.
It does not matter that Brave lives in its own, separate source repository. This code is regularly rebased on Chromium.
Your cookies rely on the flour you use to make them even if they have chunks of chocolate that the flour doesn't have. No flour, no cookies. (Except in this case it's even worse, the cookies is already done, you just add some colors...).
I too can take chromium and put it in my own git repository and change some minor stuff. It will be "forked" and "separately" developed but it would not mean a thing.
We rebase and look at all the changes, neutralizing not only on-by-default tracking Google puts in Chromium for its own benefit, but many other experiments and flagged features. We carry forked files too.
Of course, we can't maintain all of the upstream ourselves, although we wish Google had fewer typists adding bad or marginal things; but neither can Samsung, Opera, or even Microsoft. But if Google stopped maintaining, the remaining Chromium browsers would carry on.
Your comments suggest a lack of familiarity with our GitHub.
