Searching on Google Maps Does Nothing In Chrome

If you’re experiencing an issue when using Chrome with Google Maps where typing in a location and hitting enter either does nothing or just says “Loading…” forever, you’ve very likely hit upon a bug in the Skype click-to-call extension.

Skype automatically installs this “add-on” when you install Skype and it adds links to phone numbers so that you can click them to call on Skype. Unfortunately, Google Maps seems to be triggering a bug in the extension and so it is either corrupting the data returned to the Google Maps javascript or just preventing the request from ever returning.

To solve the issue, just uninstall the Skype click to call add-on. I did that by right clicking the Skype icon in the toolbar and selecting “Uninstall” but it should be possible to remove it from the about:extensions page.

I also found a Skype click-to-call plugin in about:plugins that I disabled as well – I’m not sure if it’s removed along with the extension.