Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world. As of 2024/4, it accounted for more than 65% of the global market share per Statcounter. This also means that there are many extensions built on top of Chrome to facilitate the user experience. However, some of these extensions are slowing down your browser.

A recent report from the DebugBear development team analyzed how 5,000 extensions affected the Chrome browser. Based on the findings, many extensions are Powerhogg, which can slow down your website. It all depends on how the extension handles the data and what kind of website is being visited. 

As an example, Honey Automatic Coupons and Capital One shopping apps don't work much on news sites. But when you visit something like Ikea, those extensions begin to run. It makes sense, but it causes a slowdown. Honey added 1.5 seconds of processing time on the home page of Ikea. Airline rewards programs like American Airlines and Alaska Airlines shopping also tended to have an impact on performance. 

It may not be surprising, but with the rise of AI tools, AI extensions have appeared in the top 15 extensions with a lot of processors in many tests. 

Individually, all of these extensions do not slow down the responsiveness of a website, but if multiple intensive extensions run simultaneously, the DebugBear test does not seem to explore what happens when multiple extensions slow things down at once.

Interestingly, some of the slowdown can be explained by when the extension executes the code. For comparison, the Merlin AI extension does not start running the code until the web page is displayed. Therefore, it does not delay the loading time of the website. Because the processor is heavy, clicking on anything in the page can cause delays, but the initial load is not affected.

On the other hand, the Monica AI extension will start executing code as soon as the page starts loading, adding "1.3 second processing time" and slowing down the page loading speed.

For end users, the extension cannot be modified. In addition to uninstalling the problematic extension, you can restrict it to run only on specific websites or only when you click the extension icon.