My (biased) view on the matter is that this instance is a useful standards are pushed forwards. rel='prefetch' is well trod (some support existed in Firefox <3.5) and part of the HTML5 standard. The browser appears to be given a lot of leeway in how to implement link prefetching (the page is just hinting that prefetching seems like a good idea), so persisting prefetches across navigations seems entirely within the spirit and the letter of the standard. The high profile launch of this feature in a major product is a signal that other browsers can take that persisting a prefetch across a navigation is worthwhile. That sort of feedback about what works and what's important is very helpful to the standards process, and very much aligned with the spirit of rough consensus and running code.
Abuse of standards, to me, looks more like intentionally breaking compatibility with other browsers or implementing features that are easy for one party to implement and hard for anyone else to. For example, ActiveX was problematic in part because it was straightforwards to implement on Windows and a nightmare to try to implement anywhere else. This forced other browsers to either make their non-windows users second class citizens, or fall behind on feature parity.
I work at google, but as a ground level engineer working on internal tooling, not on Chrome or Search or anything. My views here are my own.
Or to look at it another way, Google made their search experience faster on platforms they control Android/Chrome, but slower (or normal speed, whatever you want to call it) everywhere else. I'm pretty sure if MS did that they'd be (rightfully) criticized for it.
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My (biased) view on the matter is that this instance is a useful standards are pushed forwards. rel='prefetch' is well trod (some support existed in Firefox <3.5) and part of the HTML5 standard. The browser appears to be given a lot of leeway in how to implement link prefetching (the page is just hinting that prefetching seems like a good idea), so persisting prefetches across navigations seems entirely within the spirit and the letter of the standard. The high profile launch of this feature in a major product is a signal that other browsers can take that persisting a prefetch across a navigation is worthwhile. That sort of feedback about what works and what's important is very helpful to the standards process, and very much aligned with the spirit of rough consensus and running code.
Abuse of standards, to me, looks more like intentionally breaking compatibility with other browsers or implementing features that are easy for one party to implement and hard for anyone else to. For example, ActiveX was problematic in part because it was straightforwards to implement on Windows and a nightmare to try to implement anywhere else. This forced other browsers to either make their non-windows users second class citizens, or fall behind on feature parity.
I work at google, but as a ground level engineer working on internal tooling, not on Chrome or Search or anything. My views here are my own.
Or to look at it another way, Google made their search experience faster on platforms they control Android/Chrome, but slower (or normal speed, whatever you want to call it) everywhere else. I'm pretty sure if MS did that they'd be (rightfully) criticized for it.