I disagree with this stance. Pulling extensions that have a large potential for abuse is absolutely in Google's prerogative, in my opinion.

Suppose our single maintainer decided to finally sell the extension, and the person who bought it made it so that all those links hijacked information or exposed you to malware. This would happen in one day without warning. How many people would be saying that was Google's fault for allowing this to happen?

You say people should determine for themselves based on risk, but most users of Chrome extensions are naive when it comes to understanding risk.