Only partly. Much was peer pressure. Much was Google's homepage selling it to you.

And the same could be said about Firefox, yet it never happened.

Damn it, since Firefox canceled their deal with Google the latter has taken to pitching Chrome whenever a Firefox user visits Google.com.

Are you even remotely surprised, digi_owl?

Yeah, an advertisement on the most popular web site in the world stating "Download the faster browser" has nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

Years of cleaning malware off Windows PCs has taught me that average users will click on anything that offers to make their computer faster.