[Uvix]

There were some sites requiring IE6 but not that many, and the improvements like tabs were enough for people switch to Firefox where they could.

Unfortunately Mozilla’s refusal to implement process-per-tab, combined with Flash’s instability, let Chrome eat their lunch.

[prmoustache]

chrome eat their lunch for only one reason: everytime you were doing a google search, google literally begged people to download their browser while half of the smartphone were coming with google chrome by default.

In the head of people google and chrome slowly became a synonym of internet the same way the ie icon used to be in the previous decade.

[The_Colonel]

Beware of simplistic reasoning.

What you mention was certainly a major reason, but not the only one. Another one was that Chrome was simply a better browser for many years for normal users (mainly because of its performance).

[philistine]

Yeah, a lot of people switched for its performance. For a while, it was the bringing you the efforts of both Apple and Google to improve the rendering. Couldn't be beat.

[kryptiskt]

Also, Google paid a ton of money to bundle the Chrome installer with Flash and Adobe Acrobat downloads.

[Uvix]

They're doing that now (and for the last several years). I don't remember them doing that back when Chrome overtook Firefox in 2012, though...