"A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other as well as agreeing not to compete with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. A cartel is an organization formed by producers to limit competition and increase prices by creating artificial shortages through low production quotas, stockpiling, and marketing quotas. Jurisdictions frequently consider cartelization to be anti-competitive behavior, leading them to outlaw cartel practices."
If the article is true, it would be worse than a cartel, it would be effectively a monopoly with a few sockpuppet competitors.
In an actual cartel or oligopoly, you'd expect at least the cartel members be relatively equal in power. But if the article is right, then Google has basically all the power to decide the course of web tech going forward, as the other browsers devs can't meaningfully deviate from whatever vision Google has for the web, without risking their funding.
Of course it’s a cartel. They agree not to compete with each other in online search advertising, one company collects the monopoly profits and then distributes them to the other cartel members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel
I don't agree that the current situation in the browser market fits the definition of a Cartel, as I understand it! :-)