Google certainly didn't help Chrome's chances to sprint out of the gate by releasing it as a beta product that was quite rough around the edges. Not only was Chrome unstable and buggy at first, but it didn't play well with many Web sites, including some of Google's own, because Google made its release a surprise and didn't give webmasters advance notice to adapt their sites.

While Chrome's low adoption in workplaces isn't surprising, its modest popularity among consumers is more worrisome. "We haven't seen any mass exodus from consumers to jump to Chrome from other browsers," McLeish said.

Since Chrome hasn't taken the world by storm, and considering that Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple continue to enhance their respective browsers, should Google stick with this project?

"Google should stay in the game if they think they can innovate and differentiate in the long run and put enough marketing and R&D [research and development] behind the effort," IDC analyst Al Hilwa said via e-mail.

This is Google's intention, according to Brian Rakowski, a Google group product manager in the Chrome team. "There's still a lot of work to do, but it'll be pretty great," he said.