IE8b2 is not bad at all to use, but Firefox has those wonderful addons – they make all the difference for me. And when you say that you’ve never found anything on the web that doesn’t work in IE, thats sadly due to the fact that people making websites design around its quirks and inconsistencies. Compare a few browsers in the Acid tests (tests that show how well a browser can handle some complicated but perfectly valid HTML and CSS) and you’ll see what I mean. If you make a site using only valid code and only using FF for checking, you’ll find it looks pretty much identical in all the big browsers apart from IE, due to its ever-funky rendering “features”.

Biggest Chrome dislike so far: no Home button, or similar device.

I agree with you that Firefox and possibly Safari have the most to lose to Chrome compared to IE. I suspect the real reason behind it is that it will be used on their mobile platform (I can’t remember its name just now and can’t be arsed to Google it – haha) and will hopefully be more like Safari on the iphone – ie provide real content instead of some crappy cut down version that you are limited to on all other mobile platforms. Those people who have a Google phone will love their browser and (like iTunes+Safari) will install it as part of the sync suite or something.