Terrorists or cowards? You pick with this Chrome extension

Terrorists or cowards? You pick. Download the new Terrorist to Coward Google Chrome extension and you'll never have to see the word terrorist again — at least when you're browsing the web.

Extensions, or plug-ins, are bits of software that modify a web browser or some other program. The most popular extensions do things like blocking advertisements, translating web pages into different languages and enabling users to share screens. With this extension installed, all references to the word "terrorist" will be changed to the word "coward."

After the Paris attacks, which killed 129 people and injured more than 300 on Friday, colleagues Mack Flavelle and Peter Siemens were reading the news, feeling frustrated and helpless.

"I sat around mulling how everyone felt so useless," Flavelle said. "And that's stupid. We are good at the internet. We know how to make it do what we want."

What he wanted was to change the conversation and "take the power back" from the people responsible for the attacks in Paris and around the world. So he decided to do it with a simple word swap — and a little coding.

Flavelle says it took about an hour for his colleague Siemens to build the extension. The duo works at web-based project management company Axiom Zen. These types of projects are right in their wheelhouse.

"Terrorists aspire to that title but they don't deserve it," the extension's description reads. "This is how we take it away from them."

These text-changing plug-ins are nothing new. One that turns the word Millennial into snake people has more than 15,500 users.

"I started out with more creative language than coward," Flavelle said with a laugh. "But the words I would use to describe these people ... Google probably wouldn't let me use."