No, it's not a "no-brainer." Copying and pasting the URL is, AFAIK, not a common use-case for the majority of browser users. I'm reminded that right now as I type this in Safari, which some time ago made the decision to hide virtually all of the current URL except for the domain name. If you think back a few years farther back, then you remember when URLs and search boxes had different inputs, rather than the omnibox that is now standard feature across the major browsers...which means that the conscious recognition of the URL is even less likely among most users.
Furthermore, the design trend is such that in most consumer-friendly websites, users have been trained/encouraged to share via buttons -- this is something that Google itself explicitly encourages in Google Maps -- again, deemphasizing the fact that URLs are (well, generally) available in the omni-box.
So I think it's a reasonable assumption that users who copy-paste from the omnibox are relatively rare. And those that do do it have something that button-pushers don't: the ability to examine what they've just copied-pasted.
Again, I don't think this is a case of "Oh, but everyone should know better than to blindly do such-and-such", a sentiment that many of us agree is wrongly applied to the hitting "OK" on agreeing to indecipherable TOS screens. But I can see why it's not an obvious design decision given the feature set that Google wants in its search functionality. The more I think about it, the more I think it should be more incumbent upon the user to notice what they of their own volition have decided to send out as text.
How is that different than the expectation required of users who send out screenshots? When I want to screenshot a webpage on my desktop -- even though I intend just to show the webpage, I know not to use the fullscreen-capture option because it will capture lots of metadata, even if the browser page itself is in full screen. Same deal on an iphone, in which screen-capture will leak metadata about you as a user (when the photo was taken and thus, possibly your time zone. And also your carrier) unless you intentionally crop it out before sending. And cropping out photos is very unintuitive on iphones (i.e. it is not easy to do without jumping into a third party application)
Furthermore, the design trend is such that in most consumer-friendly websites, users have been trained/encouraged to share via buttons -- this is something that Google itself explicitly encourages in Google Maps -- again, deemphasizing the fact that URLs are (well, generally) available in the omni-box.
So I think it's a reasonable assumption that users who copy-paste from the omnibox are relatively rare. And those that do do it have something that button-pushers don't: the ability to examine what they've just copied-pasted.
Again, I don't think this is a case of "Oh, but everyone should know better than to blindly do such-and-such", a sentiment that many of us agree is wrongly applied to the hitting "OK" on agreeing to indecipherable TOS screens. But I can see why it's not an obvious design decision given the feature set that Google wants in its search functionality. The more I think about it, the more I think it should be more incumbent upon the user to notice what they of their own volition have decided to send out as text.
How is that different than the expectation required of users who send out screenshots? When I want to screenshot a webpage on my desktop -- even though I intend just to show the webpage, I know not to use the fullscreen-capture option because it will capture lots of metadata, even if the browser page itself is in full screen. Same deal on an iphone, in which screen-capture will leak metadata about you as a user (when the photo was taken and thus, possibly your time zone. And also your carrier) unless you intentionally crop it out before sending. And cropping out photos is very unintuitive on iphones (i.e. it is not easy to do without jumping into a third party application)