The big difference is that although Firefox is abiding by convention, all of these things are pretty easy to configure. I show my status bar, full protocol in the location bar, and so on. I can refresh with F5 or Command-R, things like that. I don't know how many times I've had to use Chrome and been frustrated with something as simple as F5 not working.

Observing the activity on interesting support tickets, I believe that Firefox designers/developers have generally been far more responsive to user requests than have the Chrome designers/developers.

I think those are the two reasons why Firefox is so important: It is a true community project, and it is a browser suitable for power users.