Typing the words “Tim Russert” into the Google search box Sunday night delivered 2,960,000 “personalized results” for the NBC newsman who died Friday afternoon. Surprisingly, what floated to the top was not news reports about his untimely death but links to his two books. There were, however, two related search choices at the very top of the page: Tim Russert dies and Tim Russert dead.

What exactly was I searching for? What was my intent? Was I looking for a new nugget of information or trying to make sense of a sorrowful event that has shaken the Washington journalism community where I spent so many years?

Perhaps both. I was also trying to tackle this week’s reading of John Battelle’s The Search How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. I thought about the questions posed by my Social Media course instructor, Garrett Graff: “Should we be afraid of Google?” Is it too big/powerful?

I also visited the sites of other search engines. Again, I typed in the words “Tim Russert.” GoodSearch revealed 823,610 results and Big Daddy spewed out 9,620,000 hits. Wow, I thought, even more than Google. Yahoo news also delivered more than 9.5 million results.

What to do with this information? Again, what was my intent? I did discover some new details and read two wonderful essays that brought some sense of understanding to the recent events. (And I also learned how many other search engines — specialized and general — are out there.)

But what I began to more fully realize is that a search engine – be it Google or any other – gives each of us access to knowledge and information that is limited only by our curiosity. I may have unearthed a small detail that I was searching for, but I also discovered how a blogger in Australia responded to the news.

Wherever our curiosity takes us; however we quench our thirst for knowledge; whatever our intent, Google and the search engine community have made the world all the more accessible for each of us to explore. And that is a good thing.