Yes, I thought this was (likely unintentionally) insulting. I rarely use urls unless it's a known site. Especially since I'm Canadian and the TLD isn't always predictable.

And on a phone, it's usually faster to google 'hacker news' or even 'hack new' if I'm lazy, than it is to type 'news.ycombinator.com'. (Yes, I'm horrible. And no, I don't want to bookmark it and make it too easy to come here....)

Typing n autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com on my devices.. yes, I'm here way too much.

Good point, yes there are reasons other than URL illiteracy (convenience) to use search as a DNS replacement. So this new behavior of Google helps even you. And without any deceptive downside since if you are URL-literate you're probably pretty well aware of what's advertising and what isn't.

Exactly. For me if I type "hac" Hacker News is the first drop down result. Practically faster than even clicking a bookmark drop down.

This is where I'm Feeling Lucky search is really useful. l <business name> sends me directly to the correct site very close to 100% of the time, even if I misspell the name of the company.