Yep, it's not difficult in Chrome exactly. It's just easier in Firefox, where the process is: visit page, click drop-down in search box select new search engine, which automatically becomes the default until a different engine is selected. This doesn't really seem so much anti-competitive as simply different in terms of browser design. The simpler process is really made reasonable by Firefox's search box, the inclusion of which seems very much against Chrome's design principles.

As a case example of how it may occasionally be better in Europe: in England, you can go from Manchester to London in 2h5m, whereas the same drive would take you roughly 3h30m (being generous and assuming that there is no trouble with traffic anywhere along the way). True, the rail travel time needs to have time to/from respective stations added, but there appears to be plenty of spare time for that (1h25m). Maybe certain routes in England are a special cases, due to the density of the population and level of demand, but that said trains in North America have been really disappointing to me, even in the populated bits.

Another point you may be neglecting is that travel time is 'lost' time if you're driving, while you can actually use the time to do any of a multitude of things if you're on a train/flight etc.