This just in: Google helps you find information!

I'm not quite sure what I'm missing about this BBC story, which contains gems such as this:

A team of Australian doctors Googled the symptoms of 26 cases for a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Well, uh, I'm fairly certain that's not particularly unique or groundbreaking. Most everyone who has a job that allows it (eg, excluding manual laborers) has at some point Googled something work-related.

The authors say Google can be a "useful aid", but UK experts said the internet was "no replacement" for doctors.

...Yes, a fast, accurate way to find specific information in the over-ninety-some thousand terabytes of information out there can be very useful for all people, including doctors. I don't believe anyone is proposing cancelling all med school programs and replacing doctors offices with webcafes, though.

"Also, a lot of sites are not credible. There are lots of good sites out there, but we also know that there are many that are not credible."

Again: this isn't breaking news, nor anything particular to looking up medical information. The greatest thing about the internet is also the worst thing: absolutely anyone can put absolutely anything out there, and it's damn hard to police. I'm okay with that; I don't think we should start tightening restrictions on who can put up a website or anything like that. But yes, this means you can easily come across false information. It's not hard to figure out what's a reputable source and what's not, though.

I sometimes feel that there's some bizarre, only vaguely-tangible generation gap at play here. To me and most of my age group, this article is a sort of "well...yes...what's your point?" type thing. Of course people use Google to find information and of course sometimes they find bad info using it. What the hell else do you use for extra research, if not Google?

But I was only 10 when Google was first being developed; it became available to the public in '98. While the particular search algorithms Google use were new at the time, the concept of searching the internet wasn't, and both the internet and computers in general were technology I very literally grew up on (I think I was maybe five when we got our first PC; it was a Gateway 386 [I believe]. We got an external modem [maybe a 28.8?] as soon as there was use for it, and I'm fairly certain my father installed a CD drive when they became available, too - it wasn't built in. Thanks for all that, by the way, dad - seriously.) So the conceptual chain of need information => search Google => enjoy is second nature to me.

As an example (and not to pick on my parents; it's just something fresh in my mind) my parents were here in London visiting me last week. I had an old mobile phone that I wasn't using, so I put off selling it on eBay and lent it to them, so we could get in touch if need be. And while they certainly understood how to use a mobile phone, they requested me to show them how to lock/unlock the keypad, how to turn it on and off, and so forth. Compare that to when I got my new phone: a friend handed it off to me, I spent maybe ten minutes playing with it, and...boom, I got it. I think that I, having grown up with them, have a more innate understanding for GUIs and key combinations doing different things and whatnot.

And I've rambled enough now; off for me to do something productive.