Google Chrome’s Latest  Move Leaves Browsers Unresponsive, Here Is What Happened

Chrome is indeed a fantastic browser and reigns amongst several other great browsers hands down! And while Chrome continuously works to make the experience of user better – be it the interface or overall functionality, there are times when it has to go through its share of glitches.  A recent Google Chrome update exemplified just that.

Most Google Chrome updates are aimed at safeguarding user experience and security. But this time, one of Chrome’s experimental features called ‘WebContents Occlusion’ gave several users a hard time.

What Exactly Happened?

A Google Chrome update called ‘WebContents Occlusion’ that was rolled out as a Chrome experimental feature left thousands of users to stare at Chrome blank screen.

To be more precise, the Chrome issue seemingly suspends your Chrome tab when you try to move some another app on top of it. This was done so that system resources could be freed when the tab or browser was not in use. While Google Chrome had all the good intent when it rolled out the update, but its aim to save CPU resources turned out to be counterproductive.

Where Did Google Go Wrong With This Update?

‘WebContents Occlusion’ was a silent Chrome experiment. It had been in testing in Chrome  Canary and Beta for over five months which are the channels for Chrome updates. But when Google moved this to the stable release, it started creating issues.

Here’s where Google might have gone wrong with the Chrome update – The  Chrome experiment was rolled out silently. The users and IT admins weren’t informed about this Google Chrome update. Also, Google probably forgot to take into account virtual machines while they were conducting the Chrome experiment.

So, Were All Chrome Users Affected?

Only businesses which use virtual machine environments like Citrix, have a heavy dependence on web-based tools, and can’t easily switch to a different browser had to stare at random Chrome white screen.

Backlash From Users

Chrome had to suffer a lot of backlash from many of its users as was witnessed on Chrome bug tracker. Users have condemned Google for rolling out the update without warning. Businesses have reportedly suffered a loss of hundreds and thousands of dollars. Operations of many companies were adversely affected, and they had to invest resources in fixing the issue.

The Fix

In the wake of undoing the damage that the Chrome experiment did to users, and responding to all the backlash and outcry, Google rolled back the erroneous Google Chrome update and might come out with a stable release, the time of which is not specified as of yet.

David Bienvenu, a software engineer at Google suggested a fix using which the users will be able to get Chrome back on track. The problem can be solved by visiting chrome://flags  and then disabling both chrome://flags/#calculate-native-win-occlusion and chrome://flags and disabling both chrome://flags/#web-contents-occlusion

That’s It!

Are you a Chrome user? Have you ever faced issues with Chrome and how did you resolve them? Do share your story with us, maybe it would help other users as well. For more such tech-updates, keep reading Tweak Library.