It's clearly necessary to compete at the high level though.
I still enjoy it because of the competitive aspect - you both have access to the same information, who put in the effort to remember and recall it better?
If it were only meta I would hate it too. But there's always a nice mix in the vast majority of rounds. And always a few rounds here and there that are so hard they'll humble even the very best!
My guess is the actual objection is the artificial feeling of the Google specific information. It cannot possibly be useful in any other context to know what the Street View car in Bermuda looked like when they did their coverage.
Whereas knowing about vegetation or architecture feels more generally useful. I think it's a valid point, but you're right that it is all down to memorization at some point.
Though some memorization is "vibes" where you don't specifically know how you know, but you just do. That only comes with repetition. I guess it feels more earned that way?
I think asking that question helps move past the surface question of how information was learned (memorization) to the core issue of which learning we value and why.