I'm pretty sure that if I typed foo in my browser back in the early 2000s I'd go to foo.com or www.foo.com. Now I type foo in Chrome, see the logo for foo, but end up at a Google search page. This is very clearly a step back in terms of user experience.
In modern Safari this pattern will often take you directly to the website (or some other, non-Google website when it guesses wrong). When it works it's very nice.
