This is an important question. In addition to the excellent, helpful observations already made by followers of this thread, there is a bit more to add.

Research change: the evidence of the research change using Google during the past 10 years. See, for example, the attached image from

Article Ten years of research change using Google Trends: From the p...

Academic search engines: An insightful review of academic search engines from 2014 to 2016 is given in

https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/viewFile/9718/pdf

I think that google search definitely gives faster access to information, but only to people who know what to search and what to select, those who read books in libraries in the past and know how to write literature surveys.

If a person without experience will draw a smart search line (probability is low) and the google will give the list of 10,000 items, what this person will do? Read the first? Perhaps. And if the 1st item for whatever (marketing?) reason is not the best truth about the subject, but some minor knowledge? And if the classical book is even not scanned? Or if it is scanned, it my easily have just 1000 reads and occupy the position 1000 in the search list. Will it ever be read by this person?

The compass of this question is exceedingly broad. Here, there, and everywhere, it is evident that, since the 1950s, information and communications technology has grown into one of the most powerful forces shaping the 21st century. We now live in a digital age in which business and societal interaction increasingly takes place online. Ever faster and cheaper, when it is not entirely new, information and communications technology allows people to seek, acquire, and share expertise, ideas, services, and technologies locally, nationally, regionally, and around the world. It boosts efficiency and productivity; reduces risks, transaction costs, and barriers to entry; provides the means for sweeping reorganization of business; and generally makes governments, markets, and networks function better. Already, it has transformed the financial services, media, retail, and telecommunications sectors. Significantly, more than three-quarters of the world's population has a mobile phone, and the number of mobile cellular subscriptions has reached seven billion.

PS: The impacts of information and communications technology are just too numerous and varied to mention in this answer. That said, here and there, the query refers to libraries and digitization. And so, there may be interest in the following articles: Article Toward a Library Renaissance

Conference Paper Striking a Balance Between Physical and Digital Resources

Conference Paper Knowledge Collaboration: Working with Data and Web Specialists

Dear @Olivier, I agree about the benefits from new communication technologies that you mentioned. But perhaps you do not see some negative elements.

Consider the assess to the classical knowledge that has been stored in books before the digital age, let say, 1990s. Not all books and articles (even important) have been scanned. There are much more internet reads of recent articles based on these books (with minor contribution comparing to original) that appear in the search list first. So young scientists may never know classics, especially in they do learning by self-search.

There are scale economies in network industries, and the emerging path-dependency. A good example about "El Farola" restaurant I heard from scientists from Santa Fe Institute (NM, USA). "Suppose that we have 2 restaurants, A and B, with A slightly better than B. Initially 51% of visitors come to A, and 49% to B. Suppose that other people base their decision not on true quality, but on what they hear from peer group. Suppose that randomly in a certain day there were more visitors in B (let say 55:45), this fluctuation is likely when probabilities are almost equal. The next day more people hear about B as a good place comparing to A, and on the day 2 this fluctuation becomes self-reinforcing. After some time we see that initially better place A has only 10% of visitors, and finally gets bankrupt.

The same happens today with clicks on two articles on similar quality. But if marketing is added, we easily can observe convergence to not the best books, art, cinema, etc.

Internet re-search algorithms and the manipulation of information are obvious risks, concerning human education. I prefer to live with these risks and to take the advantage of all possible chances. The quality of received education is a selection program for the quantity of information; the propagandistic guidance of the masses, however, is nothing new. Only the media are more intelligent and could even be implanted by surgery. It all burns down to tracking and influencing mass behavior (propaganda; see: attachment on Bernays), to increase the consumption of customers. Amazon and the like know it. In any case, it is a great age for the true research scientist, who can tap into the ocean of available knowledge and capitalize on the information high way.

Google search has helped tremendously in making available wealth of information free of charge. Distance and location is no more a barrier to getting required knowledge. However, when you search for one information and hundreds are returned, some level of intelligence is required to pick the right information.

Dear Yuri,

Again, appealing question with such a potential.

As Oliver mentioned very broadly defined question. However, on the other side very edgy. My personal theory is that all of us do live in a virtual bubble that we do create ourselves, daily. By googling, browsing, liking, disliking we do create a staggering amount of data which Google, Facebook and other big guys do use to serve us information we showed certain interest for. This way, it helps us to continue believing in what we already did, just enhancing that feeling - keeping us the way it is. Does it help us question other things we do not have affinities with? Maybe, if used wisely - which most of us do not.

On the other side, this feature has been very well used for political crowd funding. Who did it? Obama himself. A big lesson. Enjoy the brief reading.

http://www.istokpavlovic.com/blog/obamarketing

Now student can take the best knowledge from internet, and compare that with their teachers. It's realy a difficult situation for the weak teachers.

Best wishes for all...

Now student can take the best knowledge from internet, and compare that with their teachers. It's realy a difficult situation for the weak teachers.

Best wishes for all...

Google has played a vital role in shaping public knowledge on a variety of things. Sometimes, you hear people say ''ask google'' especially when they feel Google has the answer. Usually, Google does.

Google scholar has been a great tool for academic research as well.

The great variety of the sources on the internet makes one dissociated in choosing the appropriate subjects.

Following

Google as a web 2.0 platform is a repository for acquiring novel knowledge. it contains huge amount of educational resources that enhances teaching and learning. However, it has its positives and negatives.

Positives: Google has become the extension of the human brain where ideas or thing you can not keep in your grey matter is stored there. It has also become the bane for scientific research.

Negatives: in as much as there tones of information in the Google repository about 2/3 of the information are not relevant for education. One major problem that the advent of Google search has brought is the Google Effect when student or people in general know where to find information but cannot remember the import of the information.

This is an important question. In addition to the excellent, helpful observations already made by followers of this thread, there is a bit more to add.

Research change: the evidence of the research change using Google during the past 10 years. See, for example, the attached image from

Article Ten years of research change using Google Trends: From the p...

Academic search engines: An insightful review of academic search engines from 2014 to 2016 is given in

https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/viewFile/9718/pdf

Nowadays the word internet and google are used interchangeably. Such is the popularity of Google. As mentioned by the researchers above, it is purely subjective in nature. But it is definitely time to analyze whether the advantages outlay the disadvantages or vice versa. Should there be a rating scale developed for websites depending on the genuineness of information?

Check

Article Google – boon, bane or both?

I want to thank everybody for contributions to this interesting discussion. I want to make some points.

1. There is no doubt that google and other search systems are beneficial for smart researchers, those who can write a smart key word sequence and then select the best references, even if it is not #1 or #2 in the list of search results.

2. Since a lot of money from advertising and perhaps politics are behind the development of search system, the frequency of clicks (and hence the probability to find some particular material) depends on the algorithms created, which are often done to serve the interests of big money. As the result, the first outcomes in search are often not the best truth (like some classical literature before the era of internet) but the material fitting these interests.

3. The mechanism is as follows. Smart people are minority who can do the best for themselves, but they do not define evolution of popularity of different pieces of knowledge. As a result some classical knowledge (especially one that does not fit the interests of big money) might never be scanned and put on internet, and even if so, never become popular. Even for open access in modern journals a researcher has to pay substantial money (above $1000). Again this is an advantage for richer, that typically has no correlation with quality.

4. The majority of users have no ideas of path dependency, artificial advantage of some of not the best knowledge. They believe that the AI is smart and that market is efficient. In other words, more clicks - higher quality. This is especially visible on youtube. Indeed, the songs with 100 million clicks are typically good. But very often I find a good song that I like with only 10,000 clicks, while some bad songs have 1 million clicks. Inexperienced users will never find these good.

@Yuri

Referring to your last point.

Nowadays, we can basically talk about online browsing as a science. Huge majority of us do search randomly and eat "food" that have been served on their plates, on a daily basis. Barely questioning anything else. Pure convenience. However, on the other end there is a small portion of us skillful enough to search the right things on the right places. Takes a while I guess to master those skills and still takes time to perform the browsing process. Problem is that this percentage is abysmal. Internet environment became over-commercialized and too noisy.

To find a high quality piece of information is a truly an adventure - since the main internet marketing postulate is to deliver high quality content (which in most of the cases is a pure trash).

@Aleksandar

I believe it would be meaningless. Let's consider dark web, for instance. Nobody can guarantee that all information/resources are going to flow the legal steam - as it is the case now. But good concept through.

@Dusan, I agree with you. There is a low fraction of people who are able to do correct search. Even many scientists search randomly. But many of us have a kind of "immune system", being exposed to printed classical books in our previous education.

Those who are inexperienced to find right links will stay even more inexperienced. This is the problem of coming generation: How to keep all knowledge of the previous (that was in books, now is often with lower accessibility via internet) and to keep access to new information, being able to distinguish between true and false, more and less relevant. The problem of the growing information stock is substantial pollution with half-truth. Today this is extremely difficult even for professionals.

To what extent do you think that modern information systems enhance knowledge sharing? Trying not to be suggestive, but I would say that original purpose is eroding and it gets eaten up by side (read commercial) aspirations.

I agree with Dr. James F Peters

Too much information is like having no information. It really boils down to making the proper choice among many alternatives! If you know what you are doing and searching for, then google search is a great medium.

I agree: Too much information is like having no information because of constraints in investment required to check the reliability of the information provided

Example:

There are >100.000 sources of Testosterone, but only 10 studies dealing with Testosterone can be cited

Goggle offers a primary and easy background of understanding of issues. Its an important tool laden with dozens of information and other relevant materials.

Google search throws-up lots of junk leads. There is also no check on the veracity of information being put on the internet. However, because of its ease of access, most serious scholars are also beginning to rely almost totally on Google searches.

The benefits of Google search are much more although there are some drawbacks like increased plagiarism, but the softwares for checking plagiarism have reduced the misuse to Google search. We are much more dependent on Google Search for knowledge.

We all know the positive impacts- like getting information quickly, also in depth on any subject any time any where.

But this facility is available to all. Some times some information is not to be imparted to children- but there is no control over them. Most of the students are reading what is not important- some times more information confuses them and they fail to analyze them and they find it difficult to process the data.

The moves of all sorts, the video the pornography are all the social evils directing the younger g generation on a wrong path.

Average level Talented persons have lost their significance due to Google

fully agree Dr K N Sheth.

Many sexual harassment and rate of cyber crimes have increased as students have access to all sites through Google.I agree that it has merits too but many more demerits.

provides information for all subjects

I go with Dr K N Sheth

I want to thank everybody for your answers. @Amir and @Marcel stress the problem of too much information on internet. It is very difficult to find the right one, and no time and brain capacity to read it all. As I mentioned before, wrong choice of the sources to start reading can shape our individual knowledge, sometimes making it less efficient in comparison wit pre-computer era, when a good teacher was giving us the knowledge based on the best books, and we could read them in libraries.

Google is a book. We pick the way how we read it - if we do it.

I agree with Dr K N Sheth but we need Google

Google is widely accessible, free, and provides a lot of information, much of which may be accurate.

Care needs to be taken in presuming that the search engine is infallible.

Similar caution applies to Wikipedia.