Chrome = Firefox innards + Safari rendering engine + custom JS engine (V8)

Google basically said
"We rely on web apps, this is the sort of browser speed & functionality we're looking for, for the next-gen web apps"

The whole idea was that existing established browsers would take what Google had done, and reimplement it

Don't know too much about Safari
But see Firefox 3.1 alphas (minefield) for Mozilla's blazing fast JS engine & multi-process UI based on Google's work

Yes, it's possible Safari is faster than Chrome
that was the whole idea of Chrome
To jumpstart browser features