The latest chrome update changes the default behaviour from giving you a new tab page with the cursor in the omnibox to a page with your most recently used sites and a non-functional (for me) search box. Here's how to disable it (from here).

1. Go to chrome://flags
2. Find:
Enable Instant Extended API Mac, Windows, Chrome OS

Enables the Instant Extended API which provides a deeper integration with your default search provider, including a renovated New Tab Page, extracting search query terms in the omnibox, a spruced-up omnibox dropdown and Instant previews of search results as you type in the omnibox.

3. Set it to 'Disabled'.

Apparently it can disable some other things, but for me it's either disable that or go back to Firefox.