The feature expands on existing functionality already available in Chrome's Safety Check feature, which revokes camera and location permissions from websites you don't visit anymore. The company tacitly admits that browser notifications, as designed, might have been a bad idea, saying that its own data shows users receive a high volume of notifications, but rarely interact with them. Less than 1% of all notifications receive any interactions from users, notes Google.
Back in the mid-2000s, web browsers were struggling to keep up with the modern web. Google's founders saw the browser as critical ("our entire business is people using a browser to access us and the Web" as CEO Eric Schmidt recalled[2]), yet the incumbents weren't architected for rich web apps. In 2006, a small team of ex-Firefox engineers at Google - led by Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher - started sketching ideas for a new browser built for the "cloud era."
