Ubuntu – External links are opened as blank tabs in new browser window in Chrome

Since I installed Ubuntu (fresh install on a new machine), and set Google Chrome as default browser, whenever I open links from external apps these are open as blank tabs in new browser window (no actual redirection to site, just a blank tab).

I switched to Firefox and this behavior doesn't persist. If I switch back to Chrome as default browser (via default apps) it happens again.

I noticed that both in Unity Launcher and from the default app settings, Chrome isn't called just 'Google Chome' but 'New Tab – Google Chrome'. Not sure if this is related or how to fix it. I made some searches that suggest to look for mimeapps.list or check that the google-chrome-stable.desktop contains a %U value, but none of these helped.

This is an extract of the .desktop entry by the way:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Google Chrome
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U
Terminal=false
Icon=google-chrome
Type=Application
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;image/webp;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow;NewIncognito

this is mimeapps.list

[Default Applications]
text/html=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/http=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/https=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/about=google-chrome.desktop
x-scheme-handler/unknown=google-chrome.desktop