On Chrome, I had to use an extension that redirects it. It's annoying, and overrides the content of the address bar if you start typing too quickly -- but it's better than ads.

I switched to Firefox earlier this year, but the blatant memory leaks are making me strongly consider switching back to an old version of Chrome (v70 or so), which did not require a monstrous page file to run days or months without crashing.

There is a setting for what the home icon does, and it defaults to new tab...but is settable. Maybe that's what was meant?

Edit: See https://imgur.com/a/wQhvFF9