There is now much commentary on data collection from browsers, search engines, and social media. This is addressed in the movie The Creepy Line, (available from Amazon or iTunes) which is frightening beyond what I expected. Given the capacity of the US government to dictate to Google (see recent Huawei related initiatives) it may prove necessary to disengage from developments totally dominated by any one country.
David Malone tells me that the Opera Browser used to be developed by a Norwegian company, but wikipedia says the Norwegian company is now Chinese owned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
As far as I remember opera browser was developed by a Norwegian company, but it could be that it was taken over by Chinese.....
I was disappointed that there were only two answers to this question, one from Eberhard and one indirectly from David via Facebook. How ever, I followed up both and, and for anyone interested this is the experience. I changed the browser on my main desk top from Chrome to Opera. Opera seems easier and faster to use on a day to day basis. I also use Duck Duck Go as the default search engine. Both are much more private and less susceptible to data mining. I have not yet used the free VPN offered as part of the package by OPERA. Not a bad change. Anybody with similar (or different) experience?