What people actually refer to as research nowadays is really just Googling. — Dermot Mulroney

What people actually refer to as research nowadays is really just Googling.

Author: Dermot Mulroney

Insight: We've all done it: hit a snag, open a browser, type a question into Google, scan three results, and call ourselves "informed." There's something almost comforting about how accessible information feels now. But that ease comes with a real cost. Googling gives you answers, sure, but it doesn't give you understanding in the way actual research does—the kind where you sit with a question long enough to see its contours, where you bump into contradictions that force you to think harder. The tricky part is that Googling feels like research. You're learning something, you're reading, you're putting in effort. The friction that used to separate casual wondering from serious investigation has basically disappeared. Most of us aren't training ourselves to dig deeper when a quick answer appears. We've become comfortable with surface-level knowledge, which works fine until it doesn't—until you realize you've built an opinion on three headline skims or that you've confidently repeated something that's half-true. This doesn't mean Google is useless; it's a starting point. The real shift is recognizing when you've stopped. Real research asks you to question what you find, to follow threads past the first page, to sit with uncertainty a little longer. In a world drowning in instant answers, that patience has become genuinely rare—and genuinely valuable.