Is it possible to change the search bar in the new tab page from Bing to another search engine yet? It seemed like it was set to bing, couldn't be disabled, and only the address bar could be changed to another search engine.
Not quite, but there is a setting called "Search on new tabs uses search box or address bar". When set to "address bar", typing anything in that giant search textbox on the new tab page automatically switches focus to the address bar (which uses the default search engine you've configured), so you can just do Ctrl+T and type.
Sure, the rewards, shopping assistant, multiple preloading pages and sending results to Microsoft is so much more privacy friendly.. if you ignore reality
