When the user close all tabs in Chrome they get to a background state, this state is not useful for them - they only can open settings & new tab - for the new tab grid they can only open new tab.

I find this counter productive - for the user to need to open new tab from this state to be able to get to their history, bookmarks or other settings.

I was thinking about having a NTP (may be called default tab) when the user close all tabs. so they can access everything from there (which mean user will never see this background layer) - the alternative is to move the settings and the menu items to that state.

Safari does open a new tab when the user close all tabs (which is reasonable at least for me).