If they leave it there people will complain about not being modern or having wasted space or whatever else someone will come up with. All top rated modern browsers ditched the search bar a long time ago.
If they remove it, like they did, they'll have people complain not wanting change.
As always can't make everyone happy.
As for the bar itself. What is it about the smaller bar that is better than the entire address bar at the top? It is now 1 bar that will accept searches (EXACT SAME AS THE SEARCH BAR) or web addresses. Funcationally-wise, far as I can tell, it is exactly the same. What I see is complaining of it looking different.