I think it was a more mercenary decision than (just) that: Consuming content in that method left fewer options for monetization through ads. There would be many fewer searches: right now, instead of actually typing the address bar, getting to a website for many people involves a google search as they type it into the address bar, see the results, and click on the site instead of going there directly. I'm sure they would have figured it out, but it probably wasn't a problem they were very interested in solving when they could just kill the product.