> How many times have you helped a friend or colleague with some problem just by googling it even when you don't really understand what they do for a living?

I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer.

For example, recently I was involved in a cache issue for an android phone. One of the answers on Google was to download some sort of cache cleaning program. Of course, I knew that this was likely to be a security risk, but others would have downloaded it.

People are naturally wary about this thing, so sometimes I don't mind if they'd prefer not to Google and implement a solution themselves.

>> I think sometimes it is also the case of knowingly what to Google for, and being able to pick out the correct answer.

To me this is a part of literacy: how to know what to search for, and how to know which results are relevant.

This literacy is particularly important because people operate in a field fraught with coercive, user-hostile design and scammers.

Somehown I think the literature on excel is lacking. Do you know any reference which shows 'how to use it' in your sense?

Software used to come with big beautiful manuals. I remember getting Borland Quattro and the box was a cube because the manuals were so thick. I think there are a lot of benefits to printed references but for me the biggest was accidentally finding something cool while looking for something else.

I think learning has changed as well. It’s no longer a (traditional canonical) reference that’s most useful (though Microsoft surely has one on each version of excel) but rather “how do I formulate a search to help myself here?”

Programmers have been doing GDD* for a while. Other knowledge workers will catch up or be left behind their peers.

I use Excel weekly, but not daily. The last thing I remember googling in it was last week and it was (for the fiftieth time) “excel format as millions”.

* Google Driven Development