When we created Chrome, we focused on speed, simplicity, and security as its hallmark traits. Today, we’re proud to announce a new extension for Chrome, called ChromeLite, which is a giant, sprightly leap ahead on all three fronts.

In our never-ending quest for speed, our team members recently gathered to race the latest and greatest browser versions against each other. Much to our surprise, the winning browser was neither the latest version of Chrome nor another modern browser, but was instead an early text-based browser called Lynx.

Inspired by Lynx’s approach, we decided to experiment with stripping out all the extraneous details of a web page to accelerate page load time by removing a web page’s formatting, colors, images, audio, and video. The end result? ChromeLite -- the extension which brings you the web as it was originally conceived: nothing but pure text, presented in an aesthetically pleasing monochrome palette.

ChromeLite dramatically simplifies the user experience of web browsing by rendering the entire web in plain text. Users won’t have to worry about various media codecs and browser plug-ins to view much of the content on the web today. Preliminary analysis by our top-notch security team also suggests that running ChromeLite reduces your susceptibility to targeted exploits on the web by removing a popular attack surface: color.

In short, we hope ChromeLite gives all users on the web yet another option to safely and speedily enjoy the web in all its pure, unadulterated simplicity. If you’re looking to get your fingers accustomed to these new blazing speeds once you’ve installed ChromeLite, check out our newly developed Chromercise regimen.

Posted by Jeff Chang, Product Manager and Dominic Mazzoni, Software Engineer