The confusion caused by naming a browser "Chrome" would have been really obvious to anyone involved in browser hacking.

The lead frontend engineer on Chrome was previously the lead frontend engineer on Firefox, and many other people on the team worked on browsers forever - we all knew what 'chrome' meant in a technical context long before we called it that.

But we still liked 'Chrome' more than the other names, and our motto is "content, not Chrome", which neatly works with either capitalization.