Google has announced that it will soon remove a feature in Chrome for Android that has helped people reduce their mobile data usage for years. Chrome’s “Simple mode” will disappear with the release of Chrome M100 in late March, 9to5Google says. Simple mode was known as Data Saver when Google first introduced it on Android in 2014.
In those days, many smartphone owners were using limited data plans and there was a risk of significant additional fees when monthly limits were exceeded. And because mobile speeds were limited in some regions, Simple mode helped compress pages to load faster. In 2015, Google even added the option to completely block images to use even less data.
But Google no longer sees much reason to keep the option. Unlimited data plans have once again become the norm in many parts of the world, and the company says Chrome continues to reduce data usage with default settings.
“In recent years we’ve seen a reduction in the cost of mobile data in many countries and we’ve sent several improvements to Chrome to further reduce data usage and improve web page loading,” the company said on a help page this week. However, we are committed to ensuring that Chrome can deliver a fast web page loading experience on mobile devices.”
Chrome M100 version for Android will be released on stable channel on March 29, so Simple mode will remain available until then…
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