This example proves his point exactly.

I'd rather just type CAD to USD.. or BTC to USD, or any other combination in my address bar than type xe.com, load a bunch of libraries, including Facebook connect. Ghostly reports 6 trackers blocked.

Furthermore, it took 3.45 seconds to load xe.com in Incognito, while google only took 1.1

And I like Dave Ramsey's mortgage calculator: https://www.daveramsey.com/mortgage-calculator

Or retirement calculator: https://www.daveramsey.com/smartvestor/investment-calculator

For an increasing proportion of users, the "address bar" is now the "Google search" bar. You may have discovered xe.com when the distinction was much more obvious, but as time went on the browser UI underwent changes, that will change as well.

New versions of Chromium will begin hiding the full URL entirely, probably so that more and more marketing/targeting related UTM parameters can be jammed in without the user ever even knowing.

I just type "20 usd in eur" in the address bar and get the result without even hitting the enter key.

I don't know about Google but DuckDuckGo pulls conversions from Xe. It is much quicker to duck the conversion than to find it after hitting Xe's homepage.