Of course they "won" (or their "win" achieved its current magnitude) because of adverts. It's naive to say otherwise. The technical innovations put them ahead o

Of course they "won" (or their "win" achieved its current magnitude) because of adverts. It's naive to say otherwise. The technical innovations put them ahead of the curve for a brief period of time. Firefox reacted quite quickly (and was accused of blindly copying Chrome for it), and today there really is little to differentiate the two browsers in terms of performance. That's been the case for a while now. The difference is in google leveraging both its own platform as well as buying billboards and TV ad space for Chrome. That's unprecedented. If you don't think that's having an effect you're essentially saying the people who decided to finance that ad push are idiots. Despite that, Firefox still leads in market share in Germany (though with current trends that will change this year).