Chrome may be technically great, but we should also acknowledge the fact that it was the sole advertisement for years on the most valuable piece of web real estate in the universe, the google.com home page. I can't think of any other product with that distinction.
What would the browser war look like if google.com advertised Firefox instead?
Google has for years paid Adobe to bundle Chrome in the Flash plugin installer on Windows. Imagine: a Firefox or IE user visits a website that needs Flash, so they download Adobe's installer. Because they are eager to get back to that Flash website or they don't read the installer's fine print, they don't realize they need to opt out of the "Make Chrome my new default browser" checkbox. Ironically Chrome bundles its own Flash PPAPI plugin, so the Firefox or IE user has now downloaded two Flash plugins but won't actually use the one they downloaded from adobe.com. This has probably been a long, slow leak of Firefox users to Chrome and a hole that should have been plugged.
Not just Flash. I recall seeing it bundled with all manner of Freeware over the years. Google was spending some big bucks to get Chrome onto every damn Windows install out there.
What would the browser war look like if google.com advertised Firefox instead?