Yeah, this makes little sense to me. And will likely drive many of the more tech-savvy from Chrome, and instead to their closest competitor, Opera. (then again, Opera's what I personally use)
But yeah, there's a REASON there's still "Http://" and it's not due to legacy. As others have already noted, it's to differetiate it from other protocols used on the Internet, most commonly (in browsers) "https://" and "ftp://," and perhaps less commonly, ones like "irc://", "smb://" or even "afp://" It's a strong sense of inconsistency to remove it for one protocol, and keep it for the rest.
TBH, this is just taking Chrome another step toward being the "baby's browser," and less of one made for people with actual tech-savvy.