What is the process gvfsd-smb-browse?

I've found something in the GVFS man page that states that it's for browsing windows file shares.

• gvfsd-smb-browse - browses Windows Shares Filesystem volumes

GVFS is the gnome virtual filesystem:

GIO provides a VFS API to GLib applications. It includes a 'local'
implementation using POSIX. gvfs provides implementations that go
beyond that and allow to access files and storage using many protocols,
such as ftp, http, sftp, dav, obexftp, etc. It also provides support
for trash folders, for cd burning and for monitoring interesting
devices and volumes on the computer.

There are several reports of bugs in GVFS which caused 100% cpu usage including this one which is currently open.

I switched from Kubuntu 16.04 LTS to a Xubuntu 16.04 desktop expecting a leaner desktop. However, it pulled in some of the GNOME annoyance including this gvfsd-smb-browse.

Fortunately, the package that provides the plugin, can be removed by opening a terminal and using the following.

   $ dpkg -S /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-smb-browse
   gvfs-backends: /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-smb-browse
   $ dpkg -L gvfs-backends

If you don't care for the other functionalities, remove the package

   $ sudo apt-get remove gvfs-backends