It's hard to say that any of this can be pinned on Google like they're somehow to blame but at the same time we've nonetheless found ourselves in a market where users and developers have very little choice and this currently benefits Google quite a bit.
Good engineering discipline I think would ask major browsers to break themselves purposefully by randomly disabling any features that are browser specific or outside of some "core" standard saying you must only use these opportunistically but that's not a law you can write.
Open Gmail? Why not use Chrome?
Google chat? Tried Chrome?
Search Google? It’s better with Chrome!
Android phone within 1 mile of you? Use Chrome!
Breathing oxygen? Well…
This seems like using one monopoly (search) to create another (browser). Isn’t that exactly what anti-trust laws forbid? Let’s not forget not bothering very hard to make sure their stuff like Google Docs that you may be required to use at work work with other browsers. “Just use Chrome” they say.
It's nasty to now rewrite history claiming it's some kind of conspiracy to make a browser that ran way better than IE and Mozilla one.