In this article, the author shares how efficient and effective Google Documents is for faculty seeking to engage students in inquiry-based, emergent, and primary research in first-year composition courses. The specific appeal of Google Documents is that it occupies a space between "open source"--defined by the Open Source Initiative as "free, non-restrictive, and technology-neutral"--and proprietary software produced by companies like Adobe and Microsoft. While students and the author cannot change the coding or basic interface of Google Documents, they can complete complex, powerful tasks with the templates built in (and available at no cost to students or institutions). Google Documents does not limit the number of responses that can be collected and published before membership and payment are required. The steps for successfully utilizing online surveys for teaching effective primary research habits can vary. The author offers some guidelines that he follows for each term. He argues that it is preferable to engage tools like Google Documents rather than to ignore them, that it is more important to incorporate these tools and instruct students on how they should be used to protect the rights of research subjects and researchers.