Chrome "forced" upgrades

[John R. Sowden]

Interesting situation:

I received an update notice from Ubuntu (v16.04) including "Extra ffmpeg 
codecs for the Chromium Bro...".  I declined the Chromium update, as I 
have never installed Chrome or Chromium on my computer as they are both 
not open source nor completely open source, and they were created by a 
very large, well funded company that collects personal information and 
sells it to others.  Due the the security nature of mu business, I do my 
best to minimize my company's exposure to privacy violating data 
collectors.

Now comes the fun part.  I used Synaptic Package Manager to remove 
Chrome and Chromium from my computer, but Synaptic Package Manager told 
me that these programs were not installed. Then I searched for the file 
names with Chrome and Chromium and found many entries with those names, 
including executables. Hmmmmmm.

I deleted them.  Now I continue to get Updates from Ubuntu re: _only_ 
Chromium.  I declined by unchecking the box for Chromium and executing 
the program (clicking on the install button), as opposed to ignoring the 
update, but it keeps coming.

I like to think that I am not a 'conspiracy' kinda guy, but ...... hows 
the duck theory go?

John