This is google favoring people who dont really understand the shared search address bar, and want _enter_ to "do something useful" vs returning an invalid page.

however, if i type out the full tld AND a slash, like google.com/ and click enter, DO NOT take me to a subpage unless i started typing another character.

short term workaround is to add periods to the end. google.com. it will strip the trailing period (even though it is more technically correct) and the period entry will get added to autocomplete suggestions.