I first went out to the command prompt and ran
Code:
google-chrome --user-data-dir
and this worked so then I went to the desktop application file:
Code:
vi /usr/local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
and added "--user-data-dir" to the [DESKTOP ENTRY]'s Exec= line to make it look like:
Code:
Exec=/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U --user-data-dir
then the application icon and the favorite icons brought up google chrome.