It was a long time ago but I'm 99% sure that there was a banner for Chrome on Google.com since the first public release.
180 karma · joined March 9, 2024
No, it was driven by having a banner in the most privileged spot of the Internet, Google.com (the most visited site in the world with 0 ads on the homepage) saying that was faster and more secure than the alternatives. In fact Firefox benefited from some free ads on Google.com against Internet Explorer before Google developed Chromium.