Google Google

The founders of Google are very rich off of their company. But, for me, it is well deserved. I can't count the number of times I use the tool. It is my default search engine in Mozilla, and instead of typing in an URL as an address, I type in a couple of words and hit "Search" (and, yes, I know, Mozilla lets you to even take a short cut there - I just don't trust it).

So, yesterday, I wanted to get the cite for the Pentagon Papers case. No problem. I typed that in and hit search. It was short work to get the cite: New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). Or, this morning, I was having problems with Mozilla with tabbed browsing. I wanted to know what "browser.tabs.opentabfor.windowopen" did. Instead of digging through Mozilla documentation for an hour or two, I searched Google for that string, and had my answer in a minute or two.

What is a bit scary to me is that some of us are so dependant upon search engines today, whereas a large part of the population of this world, and, even this country, is not. Many don't know of search engines, or if they do, they don't use them.

Indeed, probably the biggest reason that I got DSL awhile back was to use search engines like Google. The connection is always on, and you get your responses almost immediately. And, soon, I just start taking this combination of search engine plus always on broadband connection for granted.

What is really bad though is that some of the people in my life know this now and will call up with queries that I will answer for them on-line while I talk to them. One of them is computer-phobic, and another is old enough that I give him a pass. But still...