Total Information Incorporation

Australia's The Monthly has one of the best summations of what could be called the reactionary case against Google, in the form of Gideon Haigh's Information Idol: How Google is Making Us Stupid (application/pdf Object via intermaweb).

How does one respond to this sort of thing? In all honesty I just stumble, the target is dead on, but the logic is so wrong. It always pains me to read something that so effectively points out just damn conservative so many on the left still are. Google's rapid rise towards total information incorporation is certainly one of the biggest challenges of the now, but is the way forward to run back to libraries? I certainly can't say I have much of an answer, but maybe one could start by thinking about what a public Google might be? Till then I'm just going to marvel at the irony of how this article that defends libraries so hard managed to use as it's one image a library that illustrates Bentham/Foucault's panopticon as well as any prison I've ever seen...