The reason chrome was not supported earlier is probably because OWA possibly used some arcane and non-standard IE features that were lacking in chrome. Also AFAIK it never blocked the OWA outright (by redirecting to some other url instead)
On Ubuntu at home, I used Chrome for most things. But I specifically installed Firefox to be able to use the "better" version of OWA. OWA would still work on Chrome, but it would automatically downgrade to the less-capable version.
Presumably, Chrome and Firefox were similar enough that the same code should have worked with both.
That being said, screw you Google, this is not OK. Maybe its business, but its not right. Time to start destroying my Google profile with Ghostery et al.