A few months ago I checked out DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track.  I don’t care if my search results are tracked.  I figure every keystroke I make is permanently lodged in my computer somewhere for law enforcement or Big Brother to find.  I’m cool wit dat.  When DuckDuckGo didn’t give me better results, I switched back to Google as a search engine.  The only problem was suddenly DuckDuckGo was the “new tab” default search page and I didn’t want that.  This is how to fix it.  

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
Blank tab => about:blank
Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
Any other page => full URL to the page (I typed in http://google.com)

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked.

You’re welcome.