Most often you probably go to Google to look for books. You could find a particular author or something on the New York Times Best Seller list, and most likely somewhere in your results list there will be the Amazon page for the item you're hunting down. Great! Even if you don't know what Amazon is you can stumble upon it by random searching and you get to buy the book you're looking for.
Now what about the Library, does it have the book? Can't spend all your money on books right? Well for starters you need to be in the know to realize that your city has something called an Online Public Access Catalogue and that you should go check it specifically for the book. Wouldn't it be just simpler if you could find these resources directly on Google without firing up the Catalogue. Of course it would but there are artificial barriers created so you can't do that.