I have been thinking about this and some comments from the article referred to where the recipient was annoyed by some one asking about his schedule.

Now if we look carefully at our businesses, we are selling knowledge/know how, no matter what business it is, even a clothing shop, as the owner, you know where to get your goods to put on the shelf.

Now by getting irritated and instructing your client to Google it , simply means that you are now empowering him to do a search, what you have also done, and by nature of the search engines, all types of hits using the search words come up, and invariably, your competitors also show up on the same screen. Your client being pissed off at the harsh brush off by being told to Google it, may look at your competitor, which he may not even have known existed, and you lose future sales. This also means that in future when they need services which you may offer, will first be searched on Google, and you may or may not get the next order.

What should have been done, IMHO, is a link to your web site sent to the client. In this manner you keep a closed loop between your customer and yourself.

On many occasions my clients ask me where to get ABC, I simply say that I will get back to them with an offer, and most times I get the order. All I simply done was to Google for the item, get a price, add a markup and sent a quote.