A recent comic at UserFriendly.org made me smile. It's something that I can totally relate to:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080906
Now that Chrome is little over a week old, I've had some time to use it. It's also been installed at home, and used by the Missus. Her initial thoughts can be summed up by the question that she asked after it had been on our system and set as the default browser for the day: "Did you really get rid of Firefox?" She then followed up with: "I want it back." I later found out that the browser had locked up on her several times, and that's why she wanted it back. Further thoughts from her are as of yet forthcoming.
My usage habits are a bit more complex. At work I use no less than two separate browsers most of the time, and sometimes as often as four due to the many online systems that I access (Firefox, IE, and occasionally Prism and Flock). How does Chrome fit in with all of that?
I've found that I much prefer Chrome's application shortcut feature to be a superior replacement to Prism (application shortcut + m.twitter.com = ROCK). As for just plain browsing (what I've used Flock for), I prefer Chrome as well. So two browsers have just been replaced with Chrome, not too bad!
What about the long term? Speaking personally, I don't think that Chrome will ever totally replace Firefox in my own use. There are just too many extensions that I rely on. For day to day browsing and non specific usage, it does a wonderful job, and is already gaining headway on my own PC here.
All of that aside, the most important aspect of Chrome is the competition that it will give both to Microsoft and Mozilla. Google's in a very good position to market and push a new browser (some may argue that they're in the best position). Competition breeds innovation and therefore a better product, consumers win all around, even those don't switch browsers.
