Perhaps it only afflicts me but Google Chrome has an odd user interface quirk that goes against most common convention. When closing the last tab the entire browser closes, just as you would expect when you click the X in the upper right hand corner of any application window. That is, clicking the X on a tab should logically close just the tab – and it does when multiple tabs are open.
If you appreciate a clean browsing slate at the start like I do, to work around this behavior involves opening a new tab which displays Chrome’s built-in new tab contents and then close the initial tab – which keeps the browser open.
It turns out I’m not the only annoyed user because their exists a Chrome extension that addresses the problem, somewhat. Last Tab Standing overrides the default behavior that causes Chrome to close when you exit the last tab and instead opens a new tab – exactly like the workaround I’ve employed above!
There does exist a few caveats which the author states are impossible to work around – if your last tab is the New Tab page (or Extensions, etc) the browser will still close. The extension is unable to intercept the browser calls for these pages as they are internal to Chrome and not treated in the same manner as a standard web page.
I am glad I am not the only one perplexed by this bug (though whenever I bring it up the argument always seems to be “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”).
While this strange behaviour has put me off using Chrome until Google fixes it, it is good to know that someone took the time to try to fix it themselves by writing an extension.