Searching in the URL bar is fine, but - that's traditionally done by people who can' tell the difference between a search and a URL so I avoid it - depending

Searching in the URL bar is fine, but - that's traditionally done by people who can' tell the difference between a search and a URL so I avoid it - depending on what exactly you mean (a normal search with "site:", or the prefix "a Harry Potter" for an amazon-search), and which settings are active, this may be a privacy concern; in many instances the special URL bar sends all text back to Google - generally, certain services (not Google) like to substitute things for their own products; theoretically the browser could redirect to or advertise a different bookseller - theoretically sites like Amazon could provide a nice starting point for search based on my interests / history