This is an in-development experiment, so its current state is a work in progress. Anything that would ship to users (assuming it even does) would do so in a way that does not damage the general utility of URLs.
After dealing with YouTube for the past year, I'm very skeptical Google won't mangle a UI/platform for "the good of the common user".
Judging from the current state, it won't. Currently, that operation requires 1 click to switch to text mode, a loong second waiting for the fucking animation to finish (who the hell puts animations in the way of user interaction?), then another click to unselect the automatically selected URL.
Chrome isn't hotkey capable?
Ctrl+L -> Home key -> Type reddit.com/ -> Enter key