All good points, but I think it's also important to remember that we felt very differently about Google when Chrome came out. On top of search, they'd given us gmail, maps and earth and a bunch of other stuff that was amazing at the time and free.
There was a feeling that Google just "got it" when it came to the web, so a lot of people didn't need much convincing to try Chrome.
It was a good browser, too- fast, (mostly) standards-compliant and it came with fully featured dev tools back when IE and FF didn't even ship with them.
I don't like what Google has become, but it was a very different company back then.
I don't like what Google has become, but it was a very different company back then.