It’s true, although chrome has gotten a significant boost from Google promoting it in search and every Google app (which I don’t know if they still do).
So chrome beats edge on users, but it’s also likely largely because of the unfair advantage it receives/received from that promotion. Those options are not really available to other browser developers (unless Amazon or meta also decided they want a browser for some reason).
Yes, chrome certainly had other merits too. Neither of us can say with certainty why it succeeded. Personally, I don’t think a crap browser pushed by Google would have but also an amazing browser pushed by an unknown independent developer would have either.
Certainly agree with your 2nd point though.