Google Dumbing us down or Dumbing us up?

What do you think? Is the internet dumbing us down? Carr argues that the simplicity and ease of information gathering via Google (and every other search engine available) is causing us to remember less. He is arguing that attention spans are significantly shrinking due to this ease of surfing the net for quick information. Keen argues that this ease of access can encourage plaigarism, "cut-and-paste" techniques of students, and above all, these actions can and will discourage the forming of personal opinion, nad of deep understanding of materials. Google argues that "information is a resource that can processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers." Which can be true, if the individual makes the effort to become a more productive thinker. But sometimes, this isn't the case. In class we exemplified YouTube comments. most of these blurbs are sparse, shallow thoughts that were probably not thoroughly thought-out before placing it in public. One can argue that these people have these shallow (dumb?) opinions because they don't look into the deeper meanings and origins of what they are reading or viewing.
I don't believe that Google is necessarily making us dumb, it merely makes it easier to skim over important information and become ill-informed. Also, the ease of access (especially with iPhones/internet everywhere) makes it less important for the consumer to actually remember the information presented. In both cases, it is up to the individual to research, remember, or reconcile the information which he or she has encountered.