Why should I bother will all these weird databases? Can't I just search Google?

It's OK to search Google in some cases, especially if you're simply trying to see if an article or document you already know about exists on the Web. But Google is not ideal if you're serious about doing real research. The problem is, Google is a black box search tool. You can't be sure what you're going to get out of it because you can't know what goes into it, and you can't know what's missing.

Google Scholar indexes many articles in electronic scholarly journals across many disciplines. While the search interface is simple, there's not much you can do with it other than enter some words and then browse voluminous results. It's fine if you just want to find a couple relevant articles and you're not too picky. But you can't rely on Google Scholar for comprehensive searching.

Bottom Line: Google is not a valid substitute for reliable, authoritative databases such as Chemical Abstracts.