The Chrome versions of the first few years were so nice to use. It was the _lightest_ major browser for a time. It's insane how it has drifted since then.
I don't see it. I think all the other browsers just had to become light and fast too. Even Microsoft was forced to say goodbye to IE, and instead based Edge on Chromium. And tech people were eventually able to switch back to Firefox because it got much faster too.
Google wanted a world where all browsers were light and fast in order to efficiently run complex webapps -- and they achieved that. Kudos.
The original Chrome just felt like a barebones window to the Internet. Though I agree that Firefox et al. became much less sluggish over time. (Is that only their performance improvements or did hardware get better faster than they grew?)
Also maybe "light" and "fast" shouldn't be lumped together. Chrome can definitely be fast when it has enough resources. That and sandboxing seem to make it much _heavier_ in RAM.
The web pages you visit are.
Because browsers got good, the web got orders of magnitude more complex. If you try loading a modern web page in an old version of Chrome, you'll see just how much faster Chrome has gotten.
Or alternatively, try viewing an old webpage in new Chrome. It's still super light and zippy.