Is the lack of a unified search/address bar a deliberate choice or the result of some weird IP/patent thing? Every time I switch back to Firefox, it trips me up. AFAIR, it's the only major browser that still does this, right?
There might be other reasons, but a big one is that having search and address bar in one box means that normal URLs you type into the address bar will get sent to the search engine for autocomplete by default. Since that's a major privacy violation, they're kept separate.
I've removed the search box myself. If DNS doesn't return anything or if what you type looks like a search query, it does a search anyway, so the only thing I'm missing is search autocomplete (there's an addon if you really want that anyway: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/instantfox/).
The privacy reason honestly seems like a post-hoc justification... you can easily turn off auto search in Chrome. If you were really anal, you could do what IE does and actually _ask_ the user for permission before hitting the search engine. There is really no reason why the search bar has to be kept separate, other than user comfort. And that is not a bad thing: there is no need to start making up excuses for it.
I disagree. When I type something into the search box, I'm explicitly saying "send this to the search provider". I'm more than happy for that box to auto-complete. However when I'm typing into the URL bar, I want different behaviour. That data should remain private.
When I'm saying is that I want both autocompleted search and a private URL bar.
Even if it's turned off you can leak information. Mis-type a local hostname and suddenly your secret URL is public to Google. I've done this more than a few times.
Some users are skittish of Chrome's autocomplete since it could potentially send anything you type into the address bar to Google's servers. Mozilla also makes money from selling 'search box real estate' to different providers. So it's more discoverable when the search is in its own designated box.
It's also what some of us frickin' want. I like having a separate search bar, because I can easily control which engine I'm using, and I from the URLbar I can search my history/bookmarks without irrelevant auto-complete results junking it up.
Agreeing with bitsoda, so far as I'm aware the rationale is privacy protection -- either box can actually search, but having a box that automatically queries a search engine as soon as you start typing (rather than when you hit Enter) has privacy implications.
