minus the helpful error code. I find it infuriating that it doesn't provide any hint about why it has crashed.

I think you mean about:crash

But, yes, it looks like Microsoft took a rather direct cue from Chrome.

...who cribbed it from old-school Apple. The original design for the "Sad Tab"[1] is fairly similar to the Sad Mac[2] errors from the original Macintosh. This sort of error screen isn't a totally original design.

[1] https://skitch.com/constantinexvi/f3ybu/new-tab (Chrome originally used this design everywhere, but now use a mildly different one outside of Mac builds)

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sad_mac.png

Not anymore it seems.

I get a navy blue screen, with white graphics in the middle:

[Icon of a browser with two tabs open, and a :( rotated 90 degrees clockwise in the middle]

Aw, Snap!

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Learn more

and the "Learn more" is a hyperlink to https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=9...

"Aw, snap" actually seems even less mature than a frowney face.