Interesting strategy, Google
Lots of hullabaloo over Chrome. It's kind of fascinating.
Here's how it looks to me (and, apparenlty, the guys over at CNet, so apparently I'm not a complete idiot for seeing this)...
The point is not marketshare. Or really even adding a new browser to the mix. Google seems well aware that this app will probably only gain a minimal sliver of the browser market. This is all part of a much longer-term strategy.
Google, long-term, wants to make their money from web apps, like Documents, Maps, Gmail etc. They don't need their own browser to do that, but if they have one, they can optimize for that and ostensibly provide a better front-end (read: faster AJAX performance). They release a browser with fast performance on application-driven sites, then Firefox and IE have to improve their performance to keep up, because Google's insanely fast viral marketing will let everybody know that they're behind the curve.
So the whole browser field ends up with faster application performance all around. And who benefits from that? Google.
Neat, huh?
It's an interesting strategy. I don't know if it'll work - it all depends on whether or not Mozilla and MS take the bait, although early indications are that they probably will.
All Chrome seems to be is a pretty standard browser with a lot of performance enhancements. But that's all they really need to say to Microsoft and Mozilla "hey, why aren't you thinking about this stuff?"
Kinda makes sense, too. I mean, from personal experience, I switched to Firefox because it ran stuff faster on my Mac. I switched from Firefox to Camino because Camino took all the crap out of firefox and optimized it for performance - the ability to run plugins lost out to the ability to start my browser in under 2 minutes. I switched from Camino to FF3 because it ran faster and optimized usability. IE and Mozilla have always been subject to creeping featurism, while neglecting what most users really want - a clean, fast browsing experience.
Now all we need are people to start designing useful web pages and apps, and we're golden.