[ghshephard]

I was with you right up until you wrote this:

"Do a thought experiment. Say we don't have Google, or its clones like Bing, etc. And say we don't have a replacement"

You must be a very different knowledge work than I am. Every 3-5 minutes I'm typically typing something into the my URL bar to get the appropriate page on the internet to solve my questions. Google has become an extension of my mind - I guarantee you that AltaVist/AskJeeves/Excite/Yahoo never provided me that kind of ability.

Aside from that nit, I'm totally enjoying your general theme about putting Google's contributions in context though.

[rayiner]

> You must be a very different knowledge work than I am. Every 3-5 minutes I'm typically typing something into the my URL bar to get the appropriate page on the internet to solve my questions.

I do that with Westlaw. Apparently it's been around in digital form since the 1970's, though it was a dial-up service back then.