What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Load the following GE plugin examples in either Firefox or Safari on the
Mac:
a) <http://earth-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/kml-fetch-
checkboxes.html>
b) <http://earth-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/examples/placemark-
dragdrop.html>

What is the expected output or behavior? What do you see instead?
Expected behavior is an initial spike in system resources upon loading the
pages. The CPU and memory usage should then return to "background" levels.

After loading these examples, system resources (CPU and memory allocation)
remain noticeably higher than normal. The firefox-bin and
Google Earth processes begin to use as much as 40% of the CPU (each)
and have about 120+ Mb allocated memory. If I switch to another tab in
Firefox, the usage drops to normal. This also happens in Firefox safe
mode (extensions disabled).

Which plugin version are you using?
Mac OSX 4.3.11498.3261

Which browsers and operating systems are affected?
OS: Mac OSX 10.5.5, 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 Gb 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Browser 1: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US;
rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

Browser 2: Safari Version 3.2.1 (5525.27.1)

Please provide any additional information (code snippets/links) below.
Not all examples provided at
<http://code.google.com/apis/earth/documentation/demogallery.html>
reproduce the problem. Problem still occurs when no other applications are
running.