I think Chrome's design appeal is obvious just from looking at a screenshot of Chrome and Firefox in 2008: https://imgur.com/a/uyBcxI0.
Firefox and Edge eventually adopted Chrome's design choices to have more content area, no "File, Edit, View" menu bar and an integrated search and address bar. But for years Chrome was ahead.
This. The most refreshing thing I felt when Chrome came out in 2008 was that it let me treat a webpage as an application _per se_, instead of a document being opened by an application (i.e. the browser).
