I think you and the GP are talking about two different things. Chrome’s early adoption on desktop was partly due to people finding it a faster browser, and partly users switching browsers without particularly thinking about it because they were exposed to incessant advertising for Chrome on Google properties. But Chrome definitely went to a whole new level of dominance with the rise of mobile, where a substantial number of people around the world use primarily Android phones for browsing, and thus they start off with the stock browser and never think to change it.

Yeah, I am an old man, and in my dotage, I was definitely thinking of the early desktop Chrome era, where it had more features…and now that I really dredge my memory, it was seemingly the time of never-ending ActiveX security exploits.

Mobile Chrome usage is a matter “it’s there”. It’s the system webview, so you’re going to see it at some point, no matter what.

I was also around at the time. Chrome's performance and features were what made it popular with "power users", but they're only a fraction of the market.

Businesses were slow to transition thanks to dependence on IE features and, in my experience, most "casual" users could not be bothered to install a new browser.

When I'm talking about Chrome's dominance, I'm talking about their dominance across the whole market.

It took a long time for me to convince my parents to switch to Chrome. Now I'm running into the same difficulty trying to convince them to switch away from it. I really think that kind of dominance had less to do with performance and features, and more to so with familiarity.