Since it’s as much a proof of concept experiment as a real browser, the overly simplistic interface isn’t a surprise, but it’s still gone too far and become inconvenient to use. And like our drunk or soon-to-be-drunk friend, I found the tab names condescending — though unlike him, to me it was a subliminal thing that irritated me without me being able to explain why or even that it was the tabs doing it. So I’m grateful he was able to put into words what I didn’t like about the options screen.

I’m very curious where this will go when Google ports this to a system where hiding the menu bar isn’t really an option.¹ Implementing the right subset of standard browser commands in the menu bar is going to be critical.

1. Hiding the menu bar is, of course, an option on Mac OS X, but it only makes sense with full screen applications.