I think the web searching has 3 use cases:

- snippets/usage:

This was done in the past by books. But those days when I’m writing and many languages where some of them aren’t my dailies. This can save me a lot of time.

- cleaner/modernize:

This is equivalent to asking a colleague that’s more seasoned. At least with C++ you discover there’s a brand new std that does that cleaner.

- issues:

We live in a package / deps manager days. Sometimes tiny change breaks your tools. Many times the web searching could save you day(s) of hunting issues that broke due to some dependency or package update.

While the same was also in the old days. You’d naturally had less web deps and less frequent updates.