Don't be too trusting of Google - it can only tell
you about the
info that somebody went to the trouble of putting into a web page.
I've been comparing Google results with books from the library lately,
and there is a lot of encyclopedic information that is simply not
online, or not being indexed. [...]
I would like to second this. Google is a great tool, but everything is
not on the web, and everything that is on the web is not indexed.
Historical data is one gaping hole, such as the history of a town or
small city, or a biography of a person who is no longer prominent.
There is also relatively little coverage of past controversies. You can
still find articles about the refusal of Minnesota's state government to
fund construction of a new stadium. But what can you find about the
controversy that went on regarding the construction of the present
stadium, 20-odd years ago?
And some corporations maintain official web silence on controversies
they are involved in. Continuing an earlier example, Monsanto doesn't
have a rebuttal of the Ericson & Hardell study on their web site, but if
you write to them and explain that you're writing an article about the
safety of glyphosate, they'll send it to you, with references.
Also, the web is a terrible place to try to get a sense of the relative
importance of something. Books aren't perfect but you can get a rough
sense of importance of, say, composers or painters by reading through a
survey of the era in which they were prominent.
Louis