Remember how easy it was to add a url to google search, intialy it was just www.google.com/addurl
Later on it was changed to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/?continue=/addurl
Today, I couldn’t find above url, there was an error, at first instance i thought google has taken option out for adding a URL to search engine. But after digging further I found submit url instead of add url, here is the link
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url
I am anyway never quite sure about the effectiveness of addurl or submit-url, as i never got immediate response from google search engine, hence i am using webmaster tools which provide quite decent response.
However, addurl was so easy and quick, i have always used as an second choice to quickly add new sites or subdomain.
i think google just want to keep webmaster tools if anyone wish to add website to google search engine, it make sense but it was easy for non google users or non experts to add url without using webmaster account, in order to add a site to webter one has to do quite an exercice, like create account, verify website, add url….