Back when I switched from Firefox to Chrome, FF was a very heavy browser that took up a lot of memory. Chrome was very light-weight and nimble. Clearly, that has changed since then but it was a big competitive advantage.

One process per tab is a feature. If a tab crashed in FF, typically the whole browser would need to restart whereas in Chrome the tab could be closed and re-opened without affecting the other tabs. I think that's a pretty significant feature.

Auto-updating every 6 weeks is another feature. As a developer, I don't have to worry when an update comes out since I know 90%+ will be on the new version.

While I think part of the reason Chrome has a large market share is clearly because of Google, I don't think it's the main reason. There are many other factors.