They have provided a veritable gold mine of information. Various relatives have clipped them, dated them and sent them to me in the mail. I've spent many an eye-wearying hour scanning microfilm of newspaper obituaries and fondling brittle, yellow old newspapers in binders in libraries and archives. Like everything else these days, obituaries are getting computerized. Hundreds of newspapers are making obituaries available on the Web, often for free.
Some Web sites offer links to dozens and dozens of newspaper obit archives.
I wasn't dead there, either, but rest assured that if I were, anyone wanting to know about my demise would have found my obituary. Although full obits don't appear on line, you can browse death notices or conduct a search for specific people. Look for online availability of obits to grow as we increasingly evolve into a digital society in a digital age. One of the nice things about using a search engine to browse for something like an obituary is that the darned things are infallible. If you search for Terence Day, and that string of letters is there, the computer will find it.