If you want that effect, you could turn off the dock bounce for applications. The problem I have with Google's approach is that it seems like the application didn't launch until it gets into the dock. Like, I double clicked it, but maybe the second click was off? It seems like the computer hangs before launching it when it actually did launch it and just didn't get the icon in the dock.

If the number of bounces makes you think apps are slow to start, you can disable dock bouncing. But you're totally right that it does make it feel like Chrome starts up faster.