I don't honestly know about Chrome's behaviour there, I don't really use it (not installed on this PC) due to my reliance on blocking ads. I've just stuck with FF2/Adblock/Noscript/Flashblock for the time being, and will continue to do so as long as possible.
The issue for me is the fact that I'm tired of the Mozilla team breaking stuff that doesn't need to be broken, and changing things because they think its cool, while neglecting obvious performance issues. Not to mention the attitude I got from the devs themselves about it. If I'm forced into the change regardless, I'd rather it be somewhere that doesn't in any way support that team. Principle of the thing, etc. Useless in a real world sense, but it makes me feel better at least. And since any web browsing I do outside of work is entirely for personal entertainment, feeling good about it is desirable.
Opera's address works basically the same by default, but took me about 3 seconds to find the setting to turn it off. Opera however soaked up more memory than firefox after about 20 minutes and only a fraction of the open tabs. That was in v9.41 or something though, haven't installed 10 yet.
Had the Mozilla devs given me the option to do as Opera did, I'd have been much happier. Had they released the awesomebar as an addon as it should've been, I'd have been ecstatic. People don't need eye candy rammed down their throats, it should be optional. If I want a clean and fast web browsing experience with a simple address bar like I've had for pretty much the entire time I've been on the web, I shouldn't have to download experimental addons to just get close to it. I know user 'rights/desires' like this are a bit of a silly notion on a free product, but again that just gets back to my happiness in relation to web browsing, and in the end I'm going to go to the team that exhibits a similar view to my own.