Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?

They're cute when they're this age, aren't they? Adorable and sweet, even when they're fussy. As this little girl's 4 older brothers will happily tell you, babies (especially the first baby girl after 4 boys) can do no wrong.

Then they turn 2.

Now I've never experienced a 2-year old girl, so I can't completely predict when the "precious little princess" (as our waitress called her tonight) will turn into an evil demon toddler, but most parents will tell you that all the wonder, learning, and growing interactivity of 6-24 months comes to a grinding halt at the ripe old age of 2. They're not called the terrible 2's for nothing, right?

Occasionally, though, you get a kid who just sort of skips them. Not to say that 2 is a piece of cake for them, free of temper tantrums or frustration, but it's a walk in the park compared to some of the more, shall we say, strong-willed toddlers. My current 8-year old was like that. We considered sending him back after 6 months of colic, so I think he knew better by that time. He was pretty easy. My current 15-year old, however, was delightful until someone threw the evil switch at 2 (and then increased the voltage at 3, only finally turning it off at 5).

Just like with your kids, time flies and, as ZDNet's Ryan Naraine pointed out, Google's Chrome browser turned 2 on Thursday:

Google’s Chrome browser is two years old today and the company celebrated the milestone with a new version chock-filled with feature enhancements and security fixes.

The Google Chrome 6.0, available in stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux, patches a total of 15 documented security vunerabilities.

Chrome has been my browser of choice for some time, occasionally being displaced by a particularly nice release of Opera or Firefox, but generally humming along lickity-split on any computer on which I installed it. Until Google released stable versions of Chrome for Mac and Linux, I often ended up using Chromium (the open source project that drives the Chrome browser and Chrome OS), but the basic software was the same. It was fast, integrated well with Google Apps, supported useful extensions, and was often the first to support HTML 5-enable sites.

Now that it's 2, are we in for temper tantrums, meltdowns, and embarrassing scenes in shopping malls? I don't think so. It's one thing for Google to roll out Buzz and not have anyone be interested. Wave fizzles? Meh. A new Google Labs feature gets canned? Silly engineers. But if the very window to the Internet that Google has created to thwart the world-domination plans entertained by both its Redmond and Cupertino nemeses so much as hiccups, Google will have some serious problems on its hands. Particularly given Chrome's speedy rise in market share, Google needs to maintain momentum with its browser, avoiding the sorts of setbacks that the engineering company can usually shrug off as Labs exercises and lessons learned.

Here's hoping that Chrome actually ages in dog years, has skipped toddlerhood, and is on the cusp of adulthood. Happy birthday, Chrome!