[sfink]

I wouldn't describe running as Chrome running so far ahead. Some of it is ahead, and some of it is off to the side, into some swamps and sinkholes that are not a good idea to go into.

Or to switch the metaphor slightly, Chrome is like a ship saying "hey, our hull is strong enough to go bump into that iceberg over there! I bet there are people who would love to get onto it. Let's give it a try!"

[I am a Mozilla employee, and biased.]

I'm not actually opposed to getting some of that functionality, but not until there is some kind of believable restricted-access story that makes it very clear what the user is agreeing to. Permission prompts that train us to ignore them are not that thing. Wording that only talks about the benefits of allowing things are not that either. I haven't seen anything particularly serious in this direction. (It's a hard problem. Users wildly underestimate probability of abuse and harm, especially when it makes total sense for a specific person but not for the other hundred million.)