Google has removed the popular Chrome plugin The Great Suspender from the Chrome Web Store. The company has also remotely disabled the extension for users who had it installed with a warning message saying that it contains malware.
The Great Suspender was a very popular extension for Chrome that "suspended" idle Chrome tabs thereby reducing the RAM usage of the browser. Since Chrome is known to be resource hungry, the extension became extremely popular in relatively little time. The plugin was open source so there were no privacy risks associated with it as users could see its source code on Github.
However, the plugin was sold to an unknown party late last year that seemingly added an exploit that allowed the plugin to execute any code without one"s knowledge. This led to the removal of the plugin from the Microsoft Edge marketplace, though it continued to be available on the Chrome Web Store as an update seemingly removed this exploit.
At the moment, Google and the new owner of The Great Suspender have not issued any statement as to why the extension was removed from the Chrome Web Store. However, if Google"s warning is anything to go by, it looks like the extension contained some malicious code that posed a security risk.
If you use The Great Suspender extension in Chrome, all your suspended tabs will not be restored when you open the browser next. The tabs will be there but since the extension has been disabled by Google, they will not be restored. You will have to edit the URL and remove the unique ID added by The Great Suspender to restore the tabs manually.