I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best?
2. While it's true that other browsers like Firefox have been catching up to Chrome in speed, it's still true that Chrome help lead the way and if not for it, the web would've likely been far slower today.
3. There has been an explosion in other browsers in the past few years, but admittedly they're all chromium-based, so even that wouldn't have been possible without Chrome
Faster in basically every dimension. Supporting way more than FF in terms of specs. Way more efficient on battery. Better feeling scroll, better UI.
Similarly with Safari 17 on macOS.
https://www.browserating.com/ doesn't put it in top5 on any non-ios platform?
As a former Firebug fan: Chrome/Chromium has had superior browser dev-tools experience for over a decade now.
I honestly have never seen a Chrome dev tools feature that was better or necessary for good web development that Firefox didn’t already have in the last 15 years. Yet I always see this bizarre sentiment of how the dev tools were better “just because”.
The other browsers have picked up the partitioning since then as a feature so the playing-field is far more level.
A solid example of this right now is all of the Mullvad VPN ads I've seen on the Seattle Light Rail lately. Google used to have ads everywhere for Chrome. The only time I saw Firefox stuff was the rare t-shirt at a tech conference.
I believe especially back then, Chrome performance was significantly better than Firefox. On Android, Firefox was so slow and unpolished that the ad blocking couldn't make up for it (and even that wasn't available from the start).
Have you asked them why? I'd be willing to bet that it's because of vendor lock-in if you boil down to it. Lots of things only work on Chrome. Video calls are especially prevalent right now, but there's a bunch of bot detection shit that only works on Chrome too.