Comment by plorkyeran

When it first came out, it really was so much faster than every other option that even ordinary users would immediately notice a difference. 2008 Google also had an incredibly positive reputation. If you tried to tell someone in 2008 that Google was an advertising company, you might convince them to agree that it was technically true, but they'd tell you that it was a stupid and reductive view of the company. Everyone was on board with the idea that Google's goal in creating Chrome was to help grow the web because obviously google search was reliant on the open web doing well.