You're right. It was reasonable the way it was implemented at first. However, as you mentioned, since that method is virtual now, there's no guarantee that the implementation would be cheap. The CL is out for review, if you'd like to do a quick LGTM: https://codereview.chromium.org/1865763002/ :)
Nathan has LGTM'd in spirit already.
Comment 1 by mattm@chromium.org
, Apr 6 2016