In Japan, very rarely do I see URLs. Most of the time, it's a keyword in what looks like an input box and "検索" (which literally means search) in what looks like a button. It's been this way for as long as I've been here (> 6 years).

Edit: come to think of it, a keyword in Japanese is easier to remember/type than an url in latin characters. Sure, now there's IDN in domains and TLDs, but that wasn't a thing until relatively recently, and that's still harder to remember/type than keywords.