I've never met someone without the degree that I'd trust to change the colors on a website, much less do real programming.
Seriously? I've never met anyone with a degree who I would trust to change the colours on a website. In all seriousness. CS degrees (in my experience, granted) just churn out people who think they know how to code and refuse to accept when they're wrong because they're the one with the formal training.
Google is not plural, so I don't know what you mean by "This does not mean THEY direct its day to day operation".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences#Formal_and_notional_agreement
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.