[btucker]

Because often times you don't remember the domain exactly & then you've got the same problem. Anyone remember whitehouse.com or countless other examples of this? The fact that Google is probably 99%+ effective at getting you where you want to go heavily disincentivizes relying on your brain which may not have as high a success rate as Google. Plus all the browsers have gone in this direction since search terms are more usable than domain names.

[iter8n]

Of course. This could have happened to any site, but in this case I just found it funny because 'JQuery -> jquery.com' is so simple and obvious. I'm sure the author knew the actual domain, but used google out of habit or preference.