Google has removed The Great Suspender, a popular extension for its Chrome desktop browser, from the Chrome Web Store after numerous complaints that the new maintainer of the open source extension injected malware.

The Great Suspender was used by Chrome users to "suspend" open tabs and free up memory. This feature was especially useful on computers with less than 8 GB of RAM. These users often hit a wall when they had more than 12 tabs open. (Chrome is notorious for being a memory hog.)

If you have The Great Suspender loaded as an extension in other Chromium-based browsers such as Brave, Edge, Opera, or Vivaldi, make sure it is disabled This extension has already been disabled for Chrome users. The extension has already been removed from Chrome users' desktop browsers.

Allegations about The Great Suspender date back to November, a few months after the extension's original developer announced that he was handing over the project to an anonymous person.

The actual code for the extension began to differ from what was posted on the extension's GitHub page, which included new tracking code and links to mysterious websites.

Yesterday (February 4), Google removed The Great Suspender's Chrome Web Store page, apparently actively removing it from Chrome users' browsers.

One Reddit user uploaded a screenshot of a browser notification saying that "this extension is potentially dangerous" and that "The Great Suspender" has been disabled because it contains malware.

While we cannot confirm that this image is authentic, we are certain that The Great Suspender is missing from the Chrome Web Store. The page returns a 404 "page not found" error.

The sudden removal of this extension was unpopular with The Great Suspender users, many of whom were apparently unaware of the malware's dangers.

"Is anyone using The Great Suspender, Chrome is closing all my tabs and telling me it's malware," wrote Reddit user shez33. 'Is there any way around this? Literally the only reason I'm still using chrome is because of this and session buddies."

"Chrome said it was malware and disabled The Great Suspender," TechDirt editor Mike Masnick wrote on Twitter. It's the only extension that lets me use Chrome for as many tabs as I have open."

When The Great Suspender disappeared, such users lost all their open tabs. The original creator of the extension has posted instructions on GitHub on how to recover them.

This is not the first time a decent Chrome extension has been hijacked by the bad guys. Chrome extensions that spy on users, insert ads, and even steal stored information from day one are far more malicious, and this problem goes back several years; Google has stepped up its crackdown on the Chrome Web Store, but there is more to come.

To avoid installing malicious Chrome extensions in your browser, only use extensions that you absolutely need and disable the rest at chrome://extensions/. Before installing an extension, check the user ratings on the Chrome Web Store to see if any users mention suspicious behavior.

Also, if you are concerned about Chrome's memory consumption, try using Brave or Edge instead. Both are almost identical to Chrome up to the point where they handle Google Docs properly, but they use much less RAM.