blah blah blah, it's just a few seconds!
Speed is important and difference can be very noticeable.
Chrome is extremly efficient at startup and page load.
But, I think the whole thing here for Google is
to offer a platform that can handle fast and reliable DOM change, something that current browsers are very weak to process.
Modify the DOM and it can take forever for the engine to refresh the display. With the widespread of AJAX and rich client desktop like Widget, it becomes a necessity.
Speed and Chrome makes sense for the next generation of very rich Web Application that will match or even surpass their desktop counterparts.
We are talking here of applications with tons of JavaScript, CSS 2.1, AJAX, DHTML, and Vector Graphics like in FLEX, Silverlight, SVG.
In my work, we are migrating a very rich ERP desktop application to the web and do see better perf with Chrome than desktop, while IE and FF are slower.
If Google wants to take over Office & Windows from Microsoft, they need something like Chrome.