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Usually my chrome://newtab looks like this:enter image description here

When I opened chrome recently and made a new tab, it looked like this (PLEASE NOTE! This is an image I took from chrome beta to recreate the image as I cant recreate it on chrome version 36, as after I cleared chromes data in application management, it was gone.)

enter image description here

I first noticed there was a Google search bar, and tapping just moved it to the top like the beta did. It looked exactly like the beta one, but how did it end up on my normal chrome? I searched the settings and could not find anything. I had just been browsing reddit and superuser, and was on youtube. When I came back to make a new tab it was different. I cleared the data for chrome and it was gone, so thats why I installed beta and took a screenshot for comparison. Any explanation?

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I believe your installation was selected for the experiment (aka field trial). The Chrome team sometimes rolls experimental features to a limited number of users (like 2% of all installation). Then they gather some statistics to see how this feature performs. The new style of the new tab page seems to be one of those experiments. You can turn it on (and off) via chrome://flags page in your browser (search for enable-new-ntp).

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  • Thanks, thats exactly it. I sometimes see the "youre invited" but do they also activate theirmother experimental features at random?
    – Keyes
    Sep 3, 2014 at 22:37
  • Yes, for the field trials "rolling out to 5% of installs" means that the particular user will participate with 5% probability. Your browser is like rolling a dice to determine what group (feature on/feature off) it is in.
    – Darth Beleg
    Sep 4, 2014 at 5:24
  • Also, Chrome 37 has just started rolling out which is exactly the same as the beta version. This means that the new style is now the default.
    – bmdixon
    Sep 4, 2014 at 7:58

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