It has value to certain people, sure. But given that it's mainly technically minded people who work with the kernel on a daily basis, and most people don't need

It has value to certain people, sure. But given that it's mainly technically minded people who work with the kernel on a daily basis, and most people don't need to know their kernel version number outside of limited circumstances. I would say for the majority of Linux users, it's the OS version that's more important; that is, getting help with your installation of Ubuntu, it's more useful to know that you're running 18.10 rather than kernel version 4.18. Yes, Chrome-style versioning has value. But is that value applicable to this scenario? I wouldn't say 'no', but I'm fairly comfortable saying "not necessarily". Nothing is universal, and no one solution solves every problem.