this reminds me of the era when the primary purpose of Internet Explorer was to download Firefox (or even Netscape Navigator)

Web browsers used to have a separate input field for search. Now the same input field is used for everything... if you type in a url you go there. But if not, you get a list of search results by your default search engine.

If Bing was being constantly sued and your search engine was Google, then Bing might be the most searched word on Google.

Web browsers used to have a separate input field for search. Now the same input field is used for everything

the latest firefox browser still has a separate search input field...

the latest firefox browser still has a separate search input field

Most users are using Chrome, but when I look at both the latest vanilla and dev versions of Firefox I don't see a separate search input field... just one input for all.

Most users are using Chrome

i'm guessing very few are iphone users...

when I look at both the latest vanilla and dev versions of Firefox I don't see a separate search input field

i'm looking at the search box on my FF92.0 released less than a month ago.

perhaps you have your FF settings such that search box display is turned off...

Heh. I just read about this on--ahem, cough-cough--cracked dot com. Over there, they said that according to Bing, “google” is only the third-most commonly searched term. The first two are, wait for it, “youtube” and “facebook”.

Just the other day, a library patron was looking for a book, and showed me its writeup on her phone. I asked her to go to the library’s catalog page (the nearest terminal was down) and told her the address. Next thing she showed me was, you guessed it, another search-results page--fortunately with our library catalog as the top result.

But that’s a whole different thread.

In FF, under Preferences > Search there are two clear choices at the top of the panel:
Use the address bar for search and navigation
Add search bar in toolbar

If you have "Use the address bar for search and navigation" selected, there will not be a separate search input. In that case I am not sure how you would select your search tool from the address bar.

Click tools, Settings, and put in your "default search engine". This can be changed at any time and affects both the address bar and separate search .

Easy peasy!