I am not convinced yet of the benefits of combining the two.

But I surely hope that most people are not willingly give out even more data to another US company just for a "weird" browsing experience

Going to be ironic if it's still chromium-based

considering web optimization across all over the world, that is best logical option?

It is.

are they really trying to rival Google on where they are best at? That makes no sense? browser market share takes years to take off.