Android isn't intrinsically tied to Google, unlike iOS is to Apple. Once upon a time, Android had its own, neutral Browser app. It was then replaced with Google Chrome, just like Email was replaced with Gmail. A pointless branding exercise in my opinion.
Except Google spends billions in both engineering and infrastructure to develop, test and maintain it. Including those apps is part of how they fund said development.
But these days, people expect everything to be completely free and tech companies to do things out of the goodness of their heart for no financial benefit.
