I'm not sure they fled IE as such. They saw a link (advert) on Google that said “make your internet better” and they clicked it.

Yes, some techies actively chose Chrome knowing full-well what the alternatives were, but I'm pretty sure the advertising produced much greater numbers.

(Also, the techies who enthusiastically recommended Chrome were the same ones who enthusiastically recommended Twitter a few years later, and are now enthusiastically recommending Signal — which illustrates the quality of their judgement when it comes to monopolies.)

Techies enthusiastically recommended chrome because it was by far the most stable and responsive and secure browser.

Prior to quantum, firefox was a dog, and let's not talk about internet explorer...