There's really only one reason!
Sometimes Google lets you down, and there are always better options.
Google is, let’s face it, the place where most of us go to start a search. Sometimes even when we know better, we still do it, because we all like to do things that take the least amount of effort. Sometimes it backfires though, here's an example.
I needed to quickly know who to contact within our campus’s Business Office. So I googled it. I skipped the first link because it said, "Office of Student Financial Aid" and that wasn't what I needed.
But when I clicked on the second link, this happened.
I had to scroll past my own department to get to what I wanted, and realized that almost everyone listed there does not work here anymore, except for David Au! Not only that, but Dr. Tovey is not our Associate Dean anymore. Even though this is an OSU website, I used what I knew to be true against what I knew to be false. If those categories were wrong, why would I even look at the section I needed?
So I decided to do the thing that took a few more seconds than just googling. I went to our campus's website.
I chose the directory link, then sorted the results by Business Office.
Now I had an up-to-date list of everyone who works in that office.
Maybe it took a few more seconds to go to the OSU Mansfield page than it did to just drop a search into Google, but in the end Google was what was wasting my time! It gave me the wrong information.
Part of why that happens is because it's a MYTH that the first results on Google are the best and most accurate ones. Sometimes a result only moves to the top of the list because it's the one that most people click on, regardless of whether it's accurate or not. And because, like I said, we all like to do things that take the least amount of effort. If we're all - across the world - being lazy at the same time, we keep feeding each other the wrong information!
Learning how to find what you're looking for takes time and practice, but that's what we're here for. It might seem confusing at first, but if you can land on what you actually need early in the process, it will save you tons of time weeding through whatever Google has to offer.
You don't have to figure this all out on your own!