geekess says "The flip side of this is that people spend a couple of hours on Google, taking what they read at face value, and then assume they are experts on a topic. They then ignore or shout down people who have education, training and years of experience in a particular field."
But they don't HAVE to take what they read at face value. If they have half a brain, they take it as what someone has said on the subject, and value it according to who that someone is, and what their views and record is on similar subjects. If some of the views they read are from "people who have education, training and years of experience in a particular field." who also have a past record of sensible and sensitive comment and/or action, then they value it more than a conflicting argument from a bigotted nitwit.
Google is just a search engine through which anything on the net can be searched for and examined - as a library is a place where printed information and views can be found. A library contains the works of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler, as well as the Bible, the Koran, and accounts of the beliefs and practices of many other religions, political movements and philosophers, along with shelves of fiction and nonsense. The internet contains the same mixture of material.