If I were interviewing a candidate, I wouldn't ask pointless questions about "simple facts." I would ask about design methods and give small design problems.

I'm a hardware engineer. As shocking as this may be to some, much of what I need to know cannot be easily found on the internet. I have to crack open a book to find good high level information. With the rising popularity of open college classes, this will probably change, but we aren't there yet.

For programming, the internet can be a very good resource. When I was a full-time programmer, google served as a very good reference. I would open a browser before I took a look at my bookshelf.

I dunno, I know people who's problem-solving skills amount to "paste the error message into Google and try the first solution". I want people who can derive a solution from first principles because often that's what you need to do.

Pasting error messages in Google saved my ass a few times.

It is not necessarily the wrong thing to do, but it can't be all you got.

Of course not. Its just fast and in many(mostly trivial and boring) cases the problem is already solved. Lets just say that sometimes its a better idea to just google for something instead of trying to figure it all out and in some cases-reinvent the wheel.