[fbelzile]

I think a good analogy is an automatic vs manual car. Most people prefer to have one pedal for the accelerator. But you still have many car enthusiasts (web enthusiasts) that know how cars (the web) work and want to control the mechanics behind the scenes. I wish it was still an option provided to users.

Google has a financial incentive for the Omnibar though. After searching for "facebook" users would click the first link, which might also happen to be an ad for Facebook. Effectively, turning a profit from the laziness of people not typing .com.

[nly]

In the UK most cars are still manual. Is this really not the case in the US?

Having a clutch gives you a lot of fine grained control