It’s my understanding (might have misread) that plugins (or something like it) will be possible for Chrome via Google Gears. Doesn’t mean it will match FF extensions (Safari’s plugin are not - IMHO - a match for instance), but it’s a possiblity worth keeping an eye on.
As for market share, I have no doubt Google did not make this move without shooting at the 3rd or 2nd place mid term and 1st place in the long run (when "web OS" become a reality). It won’t happen automagically on the merits of Chrome itself, I think... Microsoft has made a lock move when they decided to bundle their browser to the OS and as long as their OS is dominant we might still be stuck with IE
One good incentive would be to make Google Services more attractive when using Chrome (added feature and speed), and maybe a marketing effort from Google to convert more companies to GMail for your domain. We’ll see... but I am pretty sure it will be a success, sooner or later.
The fact that the V8 engine is open source could also make IE’s competition stronger (I don’t see Microsoft adopting V8 as it would force a key component of their browser to turn open source
). It’s going to be a real interresting competition between open source and proprietary and I have a hunch we might win this one with Google jumping in the battle
