This is interesting, I always figured it was the opposite. Many casual users don't know or care much about the difference between a search bar and a url bar and just want to type something in and get a result. Personally though I prefer having separate search and url fields because the actions are more precise.
On more than a couple occasions I've tried to make a web search in Chrome's url bar that the browser insisted was a nonsensical url. I know there's a flag to enforce one behavior or the other, but I can't ever remember it and honestly don't feel like having to memorize magic words to get basic functionality working.