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Just thought I would update the results on this. After taking PoolGuy's advice I 301'd the duplicate pages to their main pages, i.e. [Black Widget in City] ->301-> [Widget in City] Now almost every single main page has moved up on average 12 places to #1 on google! The duplicate pages are still showing in the SERPs but appear to be dropping and I guess will eventually dissapear. So I'm now a staunch promoter of dealing with duplicate content!

Alan, Google was sued back in mid-2000s, the judicial system has affirmed (and Google won that case) that Google search results are protected first amendment OPINIONATED speech and Google has every right to do as it pleases with its results. So be it if their wishes are politically biased. Having said that, Google will never utilize one factor to penalize a site, if all factors are looking mighty well for a Rush L. site or fan site but the Google Chrome user blockage stats, then I strongly doubt that will have any significant impact on rankings, if any at all. After all, Google nowadays considers such abuses when introducing a factor and may do away with a factor if it becomes abused as such. Especially, on such a little known thing as Chrome site blocking. I mean, I have been doing SEO on and off for a few years now and consider myself fairly updated and tech savvy, and I just found out about this option smh doubt the bast majority of Chrome users even know this exists, let alone try to use it. As such, any potential abuses of this should for now easily stick out to Google. Let us not forget Google does have manual review and appeals in place as well and if they find their automated code screwed up, they will re-evaluate and readjust the rankings again.

I would write in natural language without regard to SEO. If you do that you will probably be fine. The only exception that I would  make to the above statement is don't let your marketing guy write the copy because they tend to write in a chest-thumping style that uses the company name twice in every sentence. 

Changing them will definitely still matter! Google will periodically visit your (and every other) website to see if content has changed, or new content can be found. Once you make sure the content isn't duplicate anymore, Google will discover this and might (or might not) act upon does.