Debatable. The AJAX approach was pioneered by the Outlook web team ~1998 and semi-standardized as XMLHTTP in IE 5 (1999). So a decade before Chrome was releas

Debatable. The AJAX approach was pioneered by the Outlook web team ~1998 and semi-standardized as XMLHTTP in IE 5 (1999). So a decade before Chrome was released. Admittedly, Chrome did a lot to push forward web apps, but that was 100% in Google's self-interest given they were competing against thick client MS Office.