Good question and good point.
Long ago I made google my homepage. Not so long after that I set up keyword searches for the Firefox address field for google (g), google image search (gis), youtube (y), and wikipedia (w). Great stuff.
But I haven't shaken the habit of clicking on gmail and maps at the top of my homepage in order to get to those pages.
I rarely use the google entry field. Sometimes that's fun, though.

...and the google search field at the top left of the address bar in FF? Never used it. Actually, ClocX is covering it up.