People seem to be under the impression that Chrome has a location bar. It doesn't. It only has a search box with a "smart" I'm Feeling Lucky feature. If it detects that your query matches a url, it will re-write your query to the normalized url it matched and show you the corresponding page. Otherwise, it shows you all search results as you would expect of a search box.
To use the url-mapping feature, you need to start your search with either a top-level domain name or a protocol specifier, or end it with a "/". If you just type a hostname on your LAN, it won't try to visit that location, because it's not a location bar. It'll search, and fail to trigger the Lucky feature because a single word isn't specific enough to be detected as a url.
Though, it seems if you put a "/" at the end, then next time you type the word, it matches against the history and gets it right.
Anyway, it's too smart for me. I have trouble figuring it out sometimes.
I wish they would at least make it optional, e.g. turn-off-able in the browser's settings. Yes, more functionality to maintain. But this would provide the option of continuing consistency with other browser UI's and with existing workflows.
Remember, Google? "Opt-in". Or in this case, at least "opt-out-able".
There seems to be a bit of a recent trend toward hard-coded one-size-fits-all UIs in software.
MS Office is a good example - the UI was customizable almost down to the pixel in Office 2003 and earlier. But in Office 2007, the redesigned UI - with the exception of a single small toolbar - is completely unconfigurable. An MS employee told me at the time that it was a deliberate decision to compromise customizability in order to simplify the interface for the plurality of users.
It's a shame to see Google making the same decisions. But least Chromium is open-source.
It's understandable though. That level of customization requires an increase in dev resources, QA resources, turnaround time, bugs. And the payoff only pleases a small percentage of your users who probably aren't making a purchase decision based on that functionality alone (it's nice if it's there but it may not cause you buy something else). So, understandable that they may want to focus resources on more important features.
To use the url-mapping feature, you need to start your search with either a top-level domain name or a protocol specifier, or end it with a "/". If you just type a hostname on your LAN, it won't try to visit that location, because it's not a location bar. It'll search, and fail to trigger the Lucky feature because a single word isn't specific enough to be detected as a url.
Though, it seems if you put a "/" at the end, then next time you type the word, it matches against the history and gets it right.
Anyway, it's too smart for me. I have trouble figuring it out sometimes.