As I understand it, the chrome team have tended towards using more memory as a way of improving performance (i.e. trading space for time), with the feeling bein

As I understand it, the chrome team have tended towards using more memory as a way of improving performance (i.e. trading space for time), with the feeling being that most systems have quite a lot of memory (relatively speaking) so why not use it. This isn't a one off thing so would be challenging to change. It's more a case of many small decisions about increasing memory usage that in aggregate add up.