If you’ve just bought a new tablet or touchscreen Windows8 PC you’ve probably tried pinch-to-zoom in your browser. If you used the built-in Internet Explorer you’d be pleased to find pinch-to-zoom working well and as expected. If you were to try it in Google maps though you’d be disappointed although pinch-to-zoom works just fine on Microsoft’s own Bing maps. I can’t help thinking that’s just corporate sabotage. I really hate that sort of thing.

So, then you might think, OK, I’ll load Google Chrome, Google maps is bound to use pinch-to-zoom in Google Chrome, right? Wrong! Pinch-to-zoom does not work in the Windows version of Google Chrome.

Use Google Chrome pinch to zoom on Windows 8 tablet

However, if you install the beta version of Google Chrome instead (currently the latest version is 33.0.1750.70 beta-m) you can use Google Chrome pinch to zoom on Windows 8 tablets. And, that includes Google Maps. It works just as smoothly as it does on an Android tablet but not all features are working. For instance, two finger gestures for rotating the display and altering the perspective are not implemented.

Install the latest beta of Google Chrome.

There may be some disadvantages to using beta software because it isn’t fully tested and may be rough around the edges, so proceed with caution. Having said that, I haven’t found any faults with the beta version of Google maps yet. So, there you have it, a working version at last.

By the way, Google have NOT crippled Bing maps in Google Chrome. Got that, Microsoft?