This...

Although Lite mode is going away, we remain committed to ensuring Chrome can deliver a fast webpage loading experience on mobile

Actually means

Although Lite mode is going away, we remain committed to ensuring Chrome can deliver a fast webpage loading experience and subsequent data slurping returned to us in a timely manner on mobile

Chrome and all its derivatives are banned from my network.

From mine, too, especitally after the recent API changes regarding request blocking. The amount of bloatware currently present on almost all web pages is staggering. The only way to get fast webpage loadfing and overall meaningful experience today is, sadly, Firefox+uMatrix+Decentraleyes+endless tinkering with uMatrix settings.

Brave does a good job of saving my data - it blocks ads.

That alone has allowed me much more surfing bang for my bucks.

Surely this change will [1]break someone's workflow .

Of course I don't have access to usage stats, but I firmly believe there is a [2]long tail of people around the world, who would still benefit from such service. People stuck with 3G devices (for whatever reasons) in locations with 3G service disabled. People on the fringes of meaningful cell coverage.

This change follows the trend of the last decade, whereas instead of striving at catering to everyone at the price of tolerable cmbersomeness, companies, that do have the means to cater to everyone, build their services only for the mainstreamest main stream and the rest is welcome to bugger off. Microsoft leads the pack, apparently inspired by Apple. Google seem to do their best to catch up.

Of course they all are commercial companies and the sole point of their business is to make profit, and one can't ask, or indeed expect, them to keep a service running, which is not fit for this one purpose. My feeling is, though, that slowly the long tail gets longer and longer with increasing pace. I do hope this will open the door to markets seemingly well walled off by the big guns to young, fresh and innovative competition*.

* The competition who will profess the resolution not to be evil at the very beginning, only to slowly ditch that notion, which, in turn, will again open door to competition, and so on and on:)

[1] https://xkcd.com/1172/

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

As an aside, what if? 2 has been announced :-)

I've just pre-ordered a copy from Waterstones, a bit of a wait as on the xkcd website it says it will be out on 9/13.

Or 13th September for people like me.

No, I'm not trying to start a date format war!

There is of course an XKCD for that too!

https://xkcd.com/2562/

It's a fair point.

I forget where I was, one of the tourist towns on the UK South Coast - maybe Arundel - and I thought I'd lost internet.

On closer examination, I'd dropped down to Edge speeds, so switched on data saver functionality.

I'd be more concerned people in emerging countries.

Be that as it may, Lite Mode has many advantages and there is no real reason to remove it.

It's like saying "the price of gas has fallen so low, we've stopped making economical cars". No, you don't stop saving data just because in India they have great mobile data plans. I have a budget of 4.5GB/month - normally more than enough. Recently, there was a storm that cut my fiber connection for three days. Working from home, I used up a total of 6.8GB during that time, with a nice 70% increase in my phone bill for that month.

Keep saving the data, you never know when you might need that.

Besides, less clutter on the backend will do good for everyone.

Where I live in a European city, we more Gs than one can shake a stick at — none of them have even been shut down yet, afaict. But, out in the sticks, picking up a 3G signal can really help, compared to bad old GPRS. Even then, data-light sites are particularly welcome. Of course, an ad-blocker helps a lot.

Just what I want when I'm doing the "is there any signal" dance in the woods... More bloody ads.

"Mobile sites are constantly optimized to ensure they load quickly"

They add pictures, animations, cutesy stuff (like the zoom on mouseover), ads, more bloat.

I read this line in the article and wondered exactly which world the author lived in!

I don't believe web sites have generally been "optimised" since MS infected the universe with the Frontpage bloat-virus and instantly established that any webpage was impossible to construct without at least 10 times the code size it had the day before FP was released and any speed issues meant your connection wasn't fast enough ...

Would actually be an interesting research project (if it hasn't been done already) to establish the global power wastage due to the delivery of excessive webpage content ...

Mobile sites are constantly optimized to ensure they load quickly, mobile networks have sped up

From my last 5 years experience working beside web developers they may optimize a web page so that it will load and render on their laptop when the developer tools are open and they have clicked the mobile icon to make the screen smaller. The vast bulk of them didn't notice that there was also a connection speed drop down in most browsers!

People using phone and tablets, sure no problem, but they are all on wifi at home or work with 50Mb connections, or the equivalent 4G right?

Yes, but they're poor ...