twingeofregret I believe that it is not deviation that matters, but whether something is superior UX or not.
I feel that your argument would be stronger if we for example decided to change the hotkey from cmd f to cmd h. Then there is stuff to learn and you are breaking the pattern. However cmd f in this UX will work in the exactly same way, find will be invoked, user will search, enter will skip to next result etc...
The only thing we changed is saved 30px on the screen for the user because the browser already has a multi purpose input field - omnibar and we do not another one.