If you're not using GNOME, but you like www-client/chromium, you no longer have to install gconf, which also brings a few other packages people don't want like gnome-base/orbit (it's a high-performance CORBA ORB, if you'd like to know).
Of course that happens with USE="-gnome", and you also need a bleeding edge version of chromium (>=chromium-9.0.570.0-r1, hard masked). Oh, and just in case you ask: dbus-glib is still needed.
I also landed the patch upstream, so now everyone can benefit from it. Enjoy!