Is it better to travel with a tour guide

Is it better to travel with a tour guide?
Travel is more and more a common activity for people to get
refreshment. As a result,
there is always controversial ways to arrange trips. Personally I
would prefer to travel with friends only, rather than in a group led
by a tour guide.
For one thing, a tour guide can be regarded as the manager in a
team during the trip. His/her experience and personality will have
direct impact on your feeling about the whole trip. During every
long holiday in China, the government will announce the numbers
of travelers` complaints, plenty of which are due to the unpleasant
cooperation with local guide or guide from the agency. For those
who expect every minute in the trip to be enjoyable, it is unwise to
depend too much on the tour guide.
For another thing, people might argue that having a tour guide is
mimic owning a dictionary, which will introduce all the historical
stories behind every scenario. To some degree I agree with this
comment, but, people are able to find out all these things through
book reading and Internet searching, which is for sure more vivid
and impressive. Plus, a tour guide is more focused on the time
management and he/she will push you running from one site to
another, and you cannot stay where you are more interested or leave
early where you feel nothing worthwhile to take a look. That is
always a problem for traveling in a group by a tour guide.
Overall, recently a new kind of traveling prevailing in China can
best explain my point. The Agency will arrange the hotel and
transportation for you, and it is you who design the details of the trip
and manage yourself. The reason behind its popularity is its
flexibility and saving cost, plus, people who prefer to travel without
a so called tour guide will choose this solution without hesitation.