Not all docs are public

Here's a quote from an interview in this week's CIDM Information Management. It's an intelligent and literate quote but I'm going to take exception to it anyway: "I think that Google changed our world as technical communicators. All of a sudden you could type in a series of random words and get a very close match to what you were looking for. That makes traditional informational organization obsolete: the back-of-the-book index and the table of contents go out the window. People want their little sound bite that corresponds with their one question that they have right then. We can no longer provide big fat manuals." (link: Tracy Baker Shares 20 years of Tech Comm Experience)

I have heard the sentiment several times lately that Google has made traditional information organization obsolete. The problem is: of the ten companies that have employed me as a technical writer, only two produced documentation that was publicly available on the internet. At my current job, my docs are not public.

When my docs have been available through Google, readers tended to use Google at the start of their doc search. Google is undeniably the best route, and can lead to a slew of information sources.