Interesting, because many candidates would (rightly and safely) assume that you're asking if they already know the answer - not if (duh) they could just google it. And accordingly, to respond with "just google it" would mark them as a plodding, uninspired programmer - and definitely cost them points (or even outright sink the interview).

There are a surprising number of candidates & engineers that simply give up when they encounter a hard problem.

It sure is easy (and gratifying) to feel categorically superior to a significant portion of the people who walked in through that door with the idea of landing a job.

But Occam's Razor suggest that, rather than being a bunch of gutless dolts - they were (perhaps as a result of being bludgeoned by one soul-crushing interview experience too many) simply assuming a more conservative acceptance level to your question than you thought they were.

I do not believe that this logic works in all/most/many scenarios. I would not be asking a question in an interview that could "just" be googled. That generally would suggest that I am asking for trivia as opposed to asking for understanding.

But I have told interviews that I don't know, but I'd google it if I needed to in a work situation, and that's always been received positively. I guess it depends on what they're asking about though. Some stuff you should know off the top of your head...

They all had been able to get that far in their academic career because they had been able to solve problems, and solve them well and quickly.

When they ran into hard problems in the real world that they couldn't solve, some couldn't handle it well.