Google-chrome – How to stop google redirecting search to https

Over roughly the past 2 weeks Google search has either been painfully slow to return results or simply aborts after 30 seconds or so with 'page can't be displayed'.

I then noticed that the search page was using https:// instead of the usual http://

NB: This occurs when I am NOT logged into Chrome.

How do I disable this and go back to http://google.com ? I simply don't need or care about my search input strings being possibly visible to someone.

I have nothing to hide and have not felt the need to type my net banking details into the google search box any time lately.

The inconvenience of a painfully slow search so far outweighs this limited privacy benefit it is ridiculous.

I am well aware of the value of HTTPS and rely on it for my internet banking among other things. Obviously HTTPS imposes an overhead and at least it should be able to be turned off for things like search input.

I've researched and found information about a Chrome search option that did disable this, but this option no longer seems to exist.

This seems to be a worrying trend of late where Google seems to believe that they know better than I do (or you) in regard to how we want to use the web.

They have enforced HTTPS in a scenario where it is not required at a large cost of usability