One reason might be that the change brings the logo more in line with the Google identity. Google usually doesn’t do shiny and photorealistic, the Chrome logo was always a strange aberration in that respect.
Yes, it certainly seems that way. Recently Google has also changed the logos of gmail, gcal, greader etc and this looks like Chrome's turn.
This reminded me of the 2008 Google Reader redesign, where some of the rounded borders and shadows were dropped.