That could be the hard drive. ***Could*** being the keyword there. If there are bad sectors on the drive and Chrome is stored on or using one (or more) of them, then any time you run Chrome you'll run into the problem. You may also see it occur erratically with other programs because head crashes/bad blocks/bad sectors often span many contiguous areas.
I use Scannerz to test my drive, but don't go out and throw money at a tool until you try a couple of things first.
First, go to the Applications folder and rename Chrome to something else (like _Chrome.app or NaughtyChrome.app
whatever you want
using whatever words you want). Then download and install Chrome again, run it, and see if the problem persists. With luck ML won't be aware of the older install of Chrome and do a fresh install.
By renaming the original Chrome, your basically keeping all the blocks associated with that application intact but not in use. Installing the new Chrome should install on good blocks. If the drive encounters bad sectors during that installation, it should theoretically re-map them to spare sectors unless you're out of them.
Assuming you install the new Chrome and everything starts working great, then the drive likely has some bad sectors on it. In that case you might want to check out Scannerz and some of its documentation at:
http://scsc-online.com
There's a fair amount of info in both their downloads section and how-to section. A tell tale sign would also be that running the older, renamed version of Chrome still causes problems.
If the problems persist you might have a system problem, like with RAM or something. Possibly Chrome is accessing some regions of RAM or Video RAM other apps don't reach and there's a problem with them. Another possibility is that you have some type of library incompatibility problem, which is difficult to isolate (on the web anyway). You could check the RAM and other system problems by using Apple Hardware Test which might be revealing.
Last but not least, ML is very, very picky about versions and hardware. I'd make sure all your software and Chrome itself are up to date.
...of course you could always just not run Chrome....
