Google's Chrome team gave this birthday shout-out to its now 1-year-old Web browser today, Sept. 2. Check out the cool Chrome cake. Eating something with those colors can't be good for anyone.

Harry McCracken over at Technologizer offers a balanced discussion of Google Chrome's position in the market and its progress after completing its first year in a supercompetitive market up against Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

True, Chrome is only used by 2.8 percent of the world's browsing population, according to the Net Applications' August stats.

That's going from 0 to nearly 3 percent in one year. That's a clip Firefox, which has been gobbling share at the expense of IE for the last few years, could be darn proud of. Here's the latest Net Applications browser chart: