Cannot navigate in Chrome 63/TC 12.42

I have recently updated to 12.42.3048.7. I've re-enabled the extension for chrome (63.0.3239.84). When I call the snippet below, I get nothing and eventually get an unable to navigate to ... error. The browser opens, but never goes anywhere. If I enter the same URL manually, works fine. Any ideas? Seems to work fine in Firefox and IE.

var browser = Browsers.Item(btChrome);

browser.Navigate(url); .