It does if they are using OpenDNS or an ISP like Comcast (if they still do DNS interception?). These organizations redirect failed lookups to their own search

It does if they are using OpenDNS or an ISP like Comcast (if they still do DNS interception?). These organizations redirect failed lookups to their own search pages and sell the traffic on for a price or show their own ads. The alternative is a clean failure which gets handled by the browser. I believe that most browsers send you to the default search in those cases - which is usually Google. There's a kickback involved in that case too (searches from Firefox earn Mozilla a small fee for example) but I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper.