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> Compare it to Firefox. Firefox proved to be a product that was useful to a lot of people, and it rapidly gained a comparatively large share of the market quite quickly.

Woah. Put those pink glasses away. Firefox took YEARS to become anything else than a toy browser in the eyes of even developers.

Firefox was released in 2002 (and let's not even count before it was actually "Firefox" and not the Mozilla browser). In 2005, IE still had almost 90% market share. In 2007, it still had almost 70% market share.

Chrome was the game changer, not Firefox. Firefox managed to stay around and slowly grind its way to 20ish % not because it was an exceptional browser, but because the alternatives were awful.