uc50ic4more above nails it. Google is just advertising their browser on their search page. I think it's odd that you feel Chrome is intrusive yet you still use the Google search engine? If you're worried about Google harvesting your information and using it in evil ways, I would stop using their search page. The thing is though, while they do harvest information, it's not necessarily specific to YOU, it's specific to your computer. If you use Incognito mode in Chrome, everything is defaulted. Everything custom about your usage is gone.
Like uc50ic4more said, Chrome is really great in that it's Open Source and Google actively encourages people to hack it, giving out rewards for security breaches. Not to mention, it's built with the latest web standards and all the code is out there for anybody to see. Updates for the stable branch are done every 2 weeks or every month, I forget which. Microsoft takes forever to update Internet Explorer and certainly doesn't put as much effort into their updates.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Firefox because I haven't extensively used a modern version but there's a good reason why Chrome is becoming the #1 browser, if not #1 already (which it is on a few charts).
Also, I have to say, I don't think there's a lot wrong with IE9. It's actually pretty nice, but I like Chrome better
While IE9 does handle some new standards, the web is changing so rapidly, it requires a frequently updated browser.
