I think this would be great, but I can see how it might be confusing for new users or those who aren't very tech-savvy. Having an option to customize that icon's behavior would be even better.
I'm with you. I just noticed this change, and it immediately felt off.Even better, give us the option to change its position as we like — or disable it entirely. My new tab only has pinned icons, so it's completely useless for my use case.