well, imho chrome has not been developed for pure technical reasons. i guess a large % of pc user mainly use:
1. a browser
2. an office pack (excel, word, ppt etc) and ofcourse
3. a gui based operating system
though google would end up killing firefox, i don't think its strategic focus was firefox users. even the whole comic strip runs on IE v/s chrome basis (without any attention to firefox).
firefox captured approximately 19% of the market share but its still far from being a real threat to IE which remains "the browser" for windows users and covers almost 74% of overall
browser market. google hopes that its brand would help chrome doing the same damage to IE which gmail did to yahoo and hotmail.
i will not be surprised if i see a free google operating system in another couple of years especially if chrome is successful.