As a user of Chrome on iOS, I absolutely do not want this. Is there a way to turn this "feature" totally off? I've been looking through the links and didn't see a mention of it.
@RexRollman: it seems Google is experimenting with that at the moment and the feature is opt-in only, so no worry.
When you download the new Chrome for iOS you "have to" include Chrome into "Today widgets" section and also Enable "Physical Web Scanning" that will show you the list nearby URLs broadcasted by beacons.
As you can see there is still a lot of efforts there and you need to turn on initially.