While the early release of the Chrome comic might have changed the way Google went about launching its new browser, it definitely did not hurt Chrome's early success. According to data from Net Applications, Chrome captured more than 1% of the browser market within its first day of release. Since then, it has been growing steadily and is now at around 1.5%, as both technology blogs and mainstream publications have written about it almost nonstop since Monday morning.
Good Timing
Even if it was accidental, the timing of Chrome's release could have hardly been any better. As the news leaked during Labor Day, which, by all measures, is traditionally a very slow news day, anticipation built quickly in the blogosphere and Chrome easily dominated the tech news cycle for the coming days. Also, the fact that Google streamed the announcement live and had the browser ready for download even before the announcement had finished surely helped to keep the momentum going.
What About the Rest?
In this short time, Chrome managed to become the 4th most used browser on the net aft