After upgrading Ubuntu to 11.04 I found Chrome to be rather slow when resolving sites, making it rather unusable. Firefox on the other hand seemed to be running OK.

Having had slow DNS issues over the years in Ubuntu, I did a quick search and found this:
http://falcon1986.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/how-to-speed-up-google-chrome-on-ubuntu/

It is indeed a DNS setting and following the instructions in that post made a world of difference. Chrome is usable again.