I'm okay with them googling too. And I tell them that at the start. But if they take ages to lookup the answer when others just know the answer, it's gonna hurt their chances.
Sure, they can search it live but you have to assess if they understand what they found. Usually, if they really know their stuff, whatever they find is just gently pushing their working memory to connect the dots and give a decent answer. Otherwise it's pretty easy to ask a follow up question and see a candidate struggle.
It's like in college when you're allowed to take textbooks to an exam. You can bet the professor spent more time crafting questions that you can't answer blindly.
That being said, I think both types of questions have their place in an interview process. You can start with the no searching allowed questions in the beginning to assess real basic knowledge and, once you determine the candidate has some knowledge, you start probing more to see if they can connect the dots, maybe it's architecture decisions and their consequences, maybe it's an unexpected requirement and how they would react, etc.
It's like in college when you're allowed to take textbooks to an exam. You can bet the professor spent more time crafting questions that you can't answer blindly.
That being said, I think both types of questions have their place in an interview process. You can start with the no searching allowed questions in the beginning to assess real basic knowledge and, once you determine the candidate has some knowledge, you start probing more to see if they can connect the dots, maybe it's architecture decisions and their consequences, maybe it's an unexpected requirement and how they would react, etc.