First, you can find Google's own instructions about how to uninstall the above plugin at
http://support.google.com/chat/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=161994
Second, my eternal thanks to you,
dprovi, for asking and phrasing your question exactly as you did.
Quick glance to background: I spend hours and hours performing research for my clients. My routine for "closing up shop" at the end of my workday concludes with a complete, top-to-bottom reset and clean-up of Safari, so it's ready for a sparkling fresh start of the next day's work session.
In my work, I'd never encountered the 100% CPU issue on my Black Macbook Intel 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo (Dual Core) until a couple of months ago, when I d/l'd the most recent release of Safari (6.0.4).
With the advent of Safari 6, anyone serious about resetting, emptying the cache, and tossing out the cookie dust, had to enable the Develop menu. Not an improvement by any means, because even a few extra steps are a nuisance when you're ready to shut down the laptop shop.
"Nuisance" grew to Major Aggro when the 6.0.4 update resulted in "Remove All Website Data" (Safari Preferences > Privacy > Cookies) transforming an otherwise simple, mundane task into "WTF! Are we about to explode?!?"
Specifically, deleting cookies --
- has to be repeated two or three times before it TRULY removes the offending data;
- the CPU would jump-ramp up to 100% for unusually sustained lengths of time;
- abrupt and unjustifiable overheating;
- the fan "sounds like it's a rocket ship about to launch".
All new, all unwelcome behaviours from a previously smooth-running, clean Macbook in pristine condition and working order.
Since I first noticed the 100% CPU/rocket-launching fans issue, I've researched it off and on, looking for any Safari user who tied cookie deletion to the new laptop behaviour and/or Safari 6.
There is a superabundance of complaints, notations, notions, ideas and outrage about the deleterious "new and improved" Safari (901 splendid examples at "Lion - Memory Usage Problems" at
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3193912?start=0&tstart=0). However, although I found the first hint of a solution for my particular aspect in this encyclopedic thread, I still didn't come across anyone mentioning the 100% CPU/fan dimension.
As often happens with the solutions we discover, it's seldom a straight line from Question to Answer: one thing led to another. Something said outright or alluded to in the above thread led to sussing my Activity Monitor which led to the Google Voice & Video Chat plugin culprit which brings me here. Thanks to you
dprovi (you too,
Weaselboy!), I'm feeling *way* less crazy and isolated just by knowing SOMEONE ELSE was having this problem, too.
As for my own solution to the rocket-launching fan + 100% CPU + plugin issue? Tonight, I killed the process via Activity Monitor to see what happened. The response was more or less instant from the CPU, of course, and the fan quieted and within seconds, stopped. The heat build-up dissipated as though I'd imagined it. I'll leave the plugin as-is for a day or two, but if it doesn't change its tune, good night, Google and lights out for the Little Plugin That Couldn't/Wouldn't/Didn't!
One minor point of disagreement,
Weaselboy, respectfully offered.
Ordinarily, I would agree, "deleting cookies"
shouldn't have anything to do with the issues Dprovi and I have had.
Ordinarily, that is. Yet somehow, the recombinant DNA of npgtpo3dautoplugin + Safari 6.0.3 + who knows what other alchemy of software/hardware has led to the humdrum, tedious command "remove all website data" -- and only that activity, it should be noted -- to throw the CPU and fan into violent turmoil.
