> I could have sworn I'd never signed in to Chrome using my google account, but ...

> I could have sworn I'd never signed in to Chrome using my google account, but I guess I must have mistakenly signed in to gmail or something.

Chrome 69 tricked users into signing into the browser, myself included - https://lifehacker.com/how-to-disable-chromes-automatic-sign...

That was the last straw to uninstall Chrome from all my devices and I've been a happy Firefox user ever since. Well, except now reCAPTCHA hardly ever works.