And granted: Chromium’s interface doesn’t allow the editing of this shortcut and they only work when imported from FF/IW, but I expect this to be fixed eventually. Doesn’t make much sense to have such a “hidden” feature. [UPDATE: nevermind. As handily pointed out by Chris Butler, you can edit the shortcuts under Options→Basics→Default Search→Manage. It might not be the most intuitive of places to put it, but it's there.]

As for the rest of the reasons for switching mentioned in the original post, I can certainly see where they’re coming from. No real solid counter-arguments there.

• Most files are installed in /opt/google/.
• It attempts to patch /usr/share/gnome-control-center/gnome-default-applications.xml on postinst (maybe legacy compatibility? Someone with more gnome-fu than me care to explain?).
• The postinst also automatically adds a souce for updates to /etc/apt/sources.list.d and an archive key (this is IMHO the worst part)
• It includes a daily cronjob that – at least at first glance – tries to do the same things the postinst did (new apt source, archive key, etc) and some further archive configuration. The cron script is called at the end of postinst.
• A casual look at objdump suggests it’s statically linked to libv8
• On a slightly more positive note, it at least seems to successfully undo most of the changes once removed, with the exception of the added archive key and the above mentioned patch to gnome’s default apps list (that is: if there’s any situation it actually gets applied).

I understand it might be too much hassle doing it the right way (from the corporate POV), but then why not simply cooperate a bit more with the community? Hopefully they’ll accept some criticism and suggestions.
Or even better: they could simply reuse all the work being done to officially package Chromium.

UPDATE: forgot to mention that the version string (something like “4.0.249.43-r34537″) doesn’t follow policy. Not a huge deal for a non-distributable package, but in the name of forward-compatibility – if Chrome ever becomes fully open-source – it could be smart to adopt something like “4.0.249.43-0.x”.