How to completely remove Copilot from Edge?

If you think Microsoft is bad... Apple/iOS is like living in the old AOL bubble!

I agree 100%, If providing client support for Microsoft ecosystem is bad, living in the Apple/iOS ecosystem is an awful experience. Apple has created loyal customers that do not have to deal with the tightly controlled software and services Apple has in place. Apple controls all aspects of the devices it produces, down to the clients data through their apple ID. This creates a huge burden on their development cycle. Software, security, and many other details become an in-house responsibility that is hard to maintain and manage. Just forget your apple ID password when you only have one apple device and don't have proof of ownership. You how have a very expensive brick.

Since changing the search engine to Google in the Address Bar a few weeks ago, this morning I received a Google like display (change to Chrome browser) message asking me to switch to Bing Search as it is recommended and secure.

That'll be the MS NagWare kicking in because you are refusing to be assimilated to the collective. Edge uses Chrome browser tech these days so it runs and feels similar. It's the search engine itself that is different, and IMO just not as good as Google. Edge will keep nagging you to use Bing, and therefore the unavoidable Copilot hijacker. Use Chrome/Google instead but if you must stay with Edge I'd recommend removing the Bing search engine along with others you don't use., and just having Google as the installed engine.

What is annoying is that every time an update gets pushed to Edge it triggers the NagWare again to ask you to set it to default and in some cases I've seen Bing come back. In the first instance I'd say that is just aggressive product marketing as they could easily check existing settings and leave the updated Edge as the alternate browser. In the second instance, that's just plain underhand tactics. Both are a lack of respect for the end-user's choice.

Caveat: If you device is controlled by a company admin who sets those browser and search engine options by policy then you can't do anything other than log a ticket to ask for an exception. You'll probably get bounced back on security (such as password management storage for ISO/SOC complaince) or applications compatibility grounds if they didn't test with all browser types before publishing, but at least you went down trying to defend the right to choose.

If you're looking to get rid of the annoying CoPilot chat when scrolling up, this is not Edge but Bing. Change to Google as default search engine.