Information literacy and the Web are paramount issues in academic librarianship. The central question addressed by current research was students' quality of Web utilization. Some of the recent data and studies on how students are utilizing the Web is reexamined. Our thesis is that the data are framed by an information literacy perspective, overlooking less hopeful conclusions within the same data. Our purpose is to provide a corrective by accounting for contradictory data and broader social-economic trends.