That might be Google's dream: Remove URLs completely from the user's awareness. Let them use Google search to navigate the web. And make Web site owner pay to Google Adwords to make their site addressable. Of course the www is just a minor step into that direction, but still a step into a worrying direction.
URLs are already removed from search in some locations.
I don't know if it's related.. but Twitter removes www. from tweets. Seeing as I don't have a wildcard SSL cert, I can't post my website URL on twitter as it leads to http://website.x