> Chrome gained traction because IE was really, really bad. Now it has mindshare and you might could argue that Google maintains this mindshare with malpractice.

Chrome copied lots of stuff from Opera, and Opera had 2.5% of marketshare. Firefox (who I personally didn't enjoy as much as Opera) had benefited from a grasroots campaign had taken years to get 35% of marketshare. Both were nobrainers compared to how broken IE was, and they were on the market years before chrome.

So.. Yeah. Chrome was a good product. But competitors had showed that being a good browser without insane advertising was never going to be enough.