Wow! Check out Google Answers (answers.google.com) and Google Scholar (beta - scholar.google.com).

Google Answers is a paid answers (reference) service, kinda like what we were doing at the Internet Public Library (for free :)). I remember it coming up in reference class, and looks like it is still going. Wonder what the business model is like. Anyway, look at the questions and answers - they are pretty interesting.

I notice that sometimes the question is answered as a comment by another researcher... Then the person doesn't have to pay any money, I guess? That is kinda cool, anyway.

Google Scholar - you can search scholarly journals and so forth. I tried one or two and it links to citations in PubMed (which is free) and Ingenta (paid) and so on. If you're lucky, you get the pdf from some university site. Otherwise, it's pay-per-article with Ingenta or whatever. It could still be a valuable service, to find out what's "out there" and do search-across (federated search??), though you'd have to look in your library's subscribed databases to get the full-text. A good last resort, I guess, if nothing is coming up from the library sites.