> It was much faster than Firefox, that's why I switched.

This was pretty much entirely because of the JS performance advantage from V8 near the beginning.

> It could handle more tabs.

This was pretty much entirely because of the JS performance advantage from V8 near the beginning.

> It isolated tabs so if one crashed it didn't crash the whole browser.

This is definitely a win for Chrome and something we eventually saw Firefox adopt, but many many years later.

> Memory usage was lower.

This was a combination of factors, but heavily related to the improved JS performance due to V8. A big piece was also that XUL was a pig.

Thanks for pointing out some specific things, but while they affect specific perceptions, underneath the covers most of this had to do with the combination of improved JS performance in Chrome + a heavy reliance on JS for web.