Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

It’s surprising that the proven conflict of interest posed by other departments driving Chrome team decisions was allowed to stand. I would’ve expected at minimum for Google to be required to keep Chrome/Blink as siloed off from the rest of the company as is practically possible.

What conflict of interest? You're probably thinking of manifest v3, but Safari never supported extensions. Maybe you're thinking of third party cookie deprecation, which Safari doesnt have.

In many ways, Chrome is becoming Safari - a browser a lot of users like. So again, what conflict of interest?

I forget the details, but one example that I recall is that it turned out that the search team pushed the Chrome team to make changes to the addressbar search functionality to drive more search traffic. Arguably another is how signing into any Google service also signs the browser into that account, as well as Chrome on Android never supporting extensions of any kind (and thus, not supporting adblockers).