We've all Googled something in our lifetime (except for that one guy I heard ask "What's a Google?") and having worked in front end user IT support for years I can tell you that most of the time the God like skills users have commended me for were just a mixture of dropping the error message or description of the problem into Google and learning how to filter out the vast and ever increasing amounts of noise on the internet.
I can remember how I found just about every other search engine out there: Yahoo, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and AOL were all by advertising on TV in the late 90's, MSN Search (as it was called back then) was probably the first thing I ever saw when I connected to the internet for the very first time. Google though I can't remember the details of. At best I have a memory of some guy on a forum linking to it claiming it had better results. After finding Google I haven't used another search engine apart from a brief stint of using Duck Duck Go and Bing to see if I could function without Google; turns out I couldn't.
Google was my gateway to knowledge through the late 1990's and early 2000's. Long before Oxford decided to add Google as a verb to their dictionary myself and some friends were using it as such. I found that no problem was too hard for Google to find, no weird error that occurred under very specific conditions was too obscure for Google to help me find someone else across the world with the same problem that found a fix for it. No matter the query Google had the answer.
This is where the problem beings. There is a fine line between an empowering tool and a crutch. Google is the mightiest, sharpest sword out there on the internet, but it makes it so much more dangerous if you fall on it.
I started programming seriously on the web after learning my ABCs in qBasic and making static web pages just didn't cut it anymore. I wanted to know how all those cool effects on all of those geocities sites were done, how a page could store my information and welcome me back later, how new forum posts could be shown by users typing into a text box.
I found my way to PHP and JavaScript to answer those questions. I learnt a lot during that time, but I also fell into the trap of copy paste coding. Hmm I want to move an image across the page, let me just Google "How to move image across the page JavaScript" and boom my problem was solved. Twiddle with a few numbers and HTML in the script and look at that it's done.
I fell especially hard into this trap with JavaScript.Not sure why but for a long time I always though JavaScript wasn't worth learning, it never struck me as exciting or interesting, just some funky thing web browsers use on the client side. For years if I needed anything done in JavaScript I would Google for the solution, no thought or effort on my part. It wasn't until last year I resolved to really learn JavaScript from the ground up and treat it with the respect it deserved. I stopped using Google to give me neatly wrapped solutions and started using it to point me in the right direction.
A quick Google for "How to move image across the page JavaScript" brings me to some familiar forums and some new faces of websites which aim to provide neatly wrapped solutions to these types of searches. Just looking at the results brings back old memories of being frustrated when the code was over my head and the lazy desire to find something that just did what I wanted. I can sense that same feeling in some of the posters who being to get impatient when they can't just have their question answered with exactly what they're looking for.
Vu Tran posts that The best programmers are the quickest to Google. It's hard to disagree with this as I remember on particular Comp Sci assignment which my class had to do in C++. At that time no one had used C++ extensively for at least a year and a half. Most of us that were on the ball were silently Googling away getting the answers and refreshing their memory quickly on long forgotten nuances of C++. Other's were openly asking how to do X or why they were getting a certain error. This went on for a few minutes until someone yelled out "God dammit no one here knows either, we're all just Googling to and that's why we're making progress and you're not". Interestingly enough on another project the same people asking the C++ questions instead of Googling would find themselves asking "Why doesn't this work?" after quickly Googling and copy pasting code they didn't fully understand.
You see the key here is not only to quickly run to Google, but to also know how to filter out the results which are a technical match to you search, but not to your over all goal. Not knowing how to effectively wield the power you end up falling into a deeper and deeper trap of ignorance.
Bonus chatter: I once said the word Google out loud to some kids that weren't in the "tech" crowd in high school and someone yelled at me for having dared to share the ultimate secret of technology with the plebeians.