it's the "thin" browsers that are half-embedded in other apps, such as Google News. In the menu you can see "Running in Chrome" and "Open in <yourdefaultbowser>"

This feature is called Android Custom Tabs and it is supported by most browsers on Android afaik. I use Firefox for this purpose, but it is possible that certain Google apps always use Chrome for this, not entirely sure.

Some apps specifically open chrome, e.g. chatgpt was doing that for login. Dunno if still is.