In theory, yes. In practice, many people hate certain privacy-related aspects of Chrome, so someone created an ungoogled version. You'd think it would become an instant hit, right? Wrong: most people on HN commented they would never install a browser built by a random person. It's paradoxical but this is how things are. You'd need to have a very particular position in order to be successful as a fork (e.g. MariaDB, LibreOffice). Most forks just die out as not even their creator uses them.