Enabling search on new tab no longer works

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Have "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar" set to false in about:config.
2. Open a new tab.
3. Start typing in the search field on the page.

Actual results:

Firefox moves the cursor to the address bar and types the search query there.

Expected results:

The search query should be typed where I clicked, i.e. in the search field on the page. It should be unambiguously interpreted as a search query.

The handoffToAwesomebar parameter is intentionally set to false. This workaround used to work in Firefox 147 and older and was the recommended solution for the problem (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1342545). I consider searching in the address bar a misfeature as it confuses the search queries with URLs and special pages in some cases. I want it off.

As an alternative you might be interested enabling the separate search bar.

However we are currently trying to re-enable it soon in bug 2017049.