I don't actually use
www.google.com I always use the search bar in my browser which itself uses google.com. I didn't realize people take that extra step to go to google.
I just set google.com as my homepage; vanilla, though I have used iGoogle on occasion.
To me, when I am constantly opening new tabs, getting to google right away is quite helpful, oh, 75% of the time. Other times I am trying to go to a specific webpage and opening to a blank tab and typing in the address is faster, but not nearly as often as doing something with google.
But it's also because with all of the tabs I always have open, my customized Firefox gets a little slow (which is why I have offloaded most web browsing to Opera), and my search bar is integrated into the address bar... even rather short searches tend to cause hiccups and it gets bogged-down for some reason, thus I am basically forced to use google.com in Firefox.
In Opera, I just use the address bar. I find Opera is a better overall browser when it comes to the browser and no addons. Chrome is lacking in that regard, and Firefox is definitely lacking. I do like Firefox as a better overall package, since I can get it customized to an insane degree, make it feel and act
exactly as
I want a browser to feel and act. Let's me get most things done faster, but I have to pay a price - especially due to my browsing habits, which leaves often over 40 tabs open at a time. And I have far more than that in Opera, but Opera remains more stable even over a time period of many days or even a week; Firefox, meanwhile, will just start eating up more and more memory the longer it is left open with so many tabs, especially when you add at least double the total number of tabs ever viewed, with tabs opening and closing over time.