I think this is a little silly because a lot of the fruits from the google-tree have already been reaped by the author.<p>Its not particularly hard to live google-free <i>now</i>, now that you know all of the places you want to go on the internet and have many good Google-alternatives.<p>Because you're already aware of wikipedia, and allrecipes, and reddit, and BBC news, etc, etc.<p>All of the fine websites you enjoy however were almost all once learned about from Google Search or else someone who used search.<p>Had you not had any contact with Google Search or the people who used it in the first place from 2001-2011, you'd probably still think the internet is a trite place where there's not much to learn.<p>And presumably if you stopped using Google Search now and there were no good search alternatives, you'd miss out on a lot of good sites that will be developed between 2011 and 2020.<p>Luckily for the author, search is a booming field today. It's true that Google isn't any better than the other options available <i>today</i>, but when you were doing most of your fledgling searching for good content sites back in (say) '02-'06, it was there and you benefited massively.<p>In this way I kind of think the article is essentially saying "It is easy to live without parents once you're already an adult." Trivially true, but greatly mis-understanding of the importance that his search-parents had on him.