I don't think this is true, at least in the general case. When Chrome first came out (and I was still using Firefox), I downloaded it to test it out, but didn't

I don't think this is true, at least in the general case. When Chrome first came out (and I was still using Firefox), I downloaded it to test it out, but didn't stick with it, because it wasn't immediately compelling. I came back to it occasionally, and after about 6 months they had turned it into a really great browser, much speedier than Firefox. If you look at the usage trend during the first few months, you'll notice that it starts high and curves down, then slopes back up again. I think this supports my argument. The reason that it gets a lot of share has little to do with branding so much as the fact that they made it in to a great browser after a lot of hard work on their part. The litmus test to my observation is that if this is really true, then Opera should pick up a lot of usage share from people like me who switch between browsers based on the latest and greatest. I remember trying out 10.10, and although it was good, it was no where near this good. Of course, Opera doesn't have that nice bump that Chrome does where Google puts "Hey you! Try Chrome!" on incredibly popular websites, so we'll see.