I've heard speculation that this is a large reason why Google invests so heavily in Chrome. When developers make their sites work with Chrome, they end up makin

I've heard speculation that this is a large reason why Google invests so heavily in Chrome. When developers make their sites work with Chrome, they end up making their sites work nicely for the Googlebot without even realizing it. If the Googlebot used a web engine that wasn't found in a common browser, then they would have to pay the costs to make it compatible with all web pages out there. Instead, they push that cost onto developers targeting Chrome. All work to make websites work right in Chrome also make them work for the Googlebot, effectively standardizing the web onto something that the Googlebot knows how to process.