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:

Moreover, Google recently confirmed a bundling deal with Sony in which the Japanese computer maker will offer Chrome and IE on its Vaio laptops.

Microsoft rose to Web browsing power bundling IE with Windows, so there is no reason to think Chrome won't win more share this way, particularly if Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo start to offer Chrome next to IE on their computers later this year or next.

To gain more share, Google also needs to get the computer vendors to market the heck out of Chrome to let people know there is an alternative on the desktop to the ubiquitous IE icon we've been seeing for ages now.

Firefox will continue to pressure IE from below, taking share from the dwindling IE; soon, Chrome will join it.

McCracken said it was hard to tell how serious Google is with Chrome. Interesting. This isn't the first time I've heard Google questioned about its intentions with Chrome.

I have heard many smart people say and write that Google intends Chrome, along with Android and no doubt the Chrome Operating System, as distractions for Microsoft to keep Bing out of its search business.

I don't believe this is true, so I'm going to go out on a little limb here and predict that Chrome will have 10 percent of the browser market or greater by its second birthday.

Also, not that you Google Watchers necessarily need these a year into using Chrome, but here are some tips on using Chrome that new users might deem helpful.