Are pointers important?

Answer 1

it is important in terms of reducing search time, the search engine make an index with the keys and what it pointers for.
when you query a search, the engine searches only in the index, and then after finding the results they will take you to the object.
this you don't need to load evrey thing to the memory in order to search it.

Answer 2

Yes. Because you dont send a copy, you send a reference of that object. So in a Pointer is the memory address of that object.