Google wants to change the world. Knowing what they know and not doing anything with it is anathema. Being able to see what people want, how they think, all this is part of their intention to build something different. That isn't a bad thing, they're not out for control in a cravenly sense, and they aren't positioning themselves as a kind of benevolent dictatorship. And Chrome, in its simplicity, telegraphs their plan.
Firefox replacement? Hardly. Microsoft replacement? Nothing like that. What Google is working on is an Internet replacement. Or rather, an alternative.
And Chrome fits into it like this: Google is creating some mental real estate with their own browser. They're never going to stop backing Firefox, they'll need their Mozilla compatriot down the road; I'd be surprised if they ever pull funding. But they want to get people used to the idea that they can browse with Chrome. Because while Microsoft starts small and works to big, starting with a Windows computer, then bringing in hardware people, software people, developers, artists, musicians, and whoever else they can populate their ecosystem with, Google is working from the other direction: collect and study every bit of data, develop a brand, build an infrastructure, create the idea of a platform, and then make something new.
Taking a step back, what has Google got already? They gots the datas; all of them, don't make any assumptions to the contrary. They'll always have that. This is the heart of their business and their product. Without Google, the Internet wouldn't be nearly as important or even valuable: think about it, it'd be a whole lot of crap pages tied together using banner ads and webrings. You remember 1998? You remember Netscape? It was worthless. So they fixed it, and now Google is a brand - even your mom knows the Google. It costs GOOG dollars. It's real.
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