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‘I miss old Google’: readers tell us how they search the internet in the age of AI (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 hours ago by Corvidae@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

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[-] tal@lemmy.today 16 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Users who were quoted in the article:

  • Sionn Achog, retired teacher 76, Dublin
  • Peter Warb, 75, UK
  • Jose Garcia Jr, 40, recovery coach, Dallas, Texas
  • Alan Caruana, consultant, 62, Malta
  • Eleazar Eke, electrical engineer, 67, Onitsha, Nigeria
  • Catherine Weber, former political analyst, 57, Oregon
  • Mark Johnson, 52, software engineer, London
  • Samuel Lieberstein, 90, retired teacher, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
  • Sean Peters, document processor, 41, Portland, Oregon

According to Wikipedia, the CIA's median age statistics for 2024 for each of the countries that had a respondent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_age

  • Ireland: 40.2
  • United Kingdom: 40.8
  • United States: 38.9
  • Malta: 43.5
  • Nigeria: 19.3

The respondents seem awfully non-representative of the larger population, considerably older. There isn't a single person who was below the median age for their country, and many who were far above.

[-] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 15 points 4 hours ago

Don't they have to be old to have used "Old Google"? It's about 30 years old, seems appropriate that the users of old Google would be 40s at minimum, yeah?

[-] tal@lemmy.today 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 35 minutes ago)

Don’t they have to be old to have used “Old Google”?

Nah. The article's "old Google" is just Google that isn't sticking an AI response at the top:

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews.

That deployed quite recently.

searches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Overviews

AI Overviews is an artificial intelligence (AI) feature integrated into Google Search that produces AI-generated responses at the top of search results. It uses the Gemini 3 family of large language models developed by Google DeepMind. It launched in May 2024 in the United States, and globally by October 2024. A June 2025 study found its most cited sources as Quora, followed by Reddit.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 hours ago

No?

I’m younger than those people and I still remember using Open Directory, HotBot, MetaSearch, AltaVista and the rest.

For that matter, I remember the Internet before the World Wide Web when we used WAIS, Archie, Veronica and Jughead to search FTP and Gopher sites.

“Old Google” to me ended around the time they merged with Double Click. It’s got significantly worse three times since then.

[-] DummyWOW@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

How old were you in 1994 that you think you're younger than this demographic and still had meaningfully used the gopher protocol?

[-] TheFogan@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm about 40, and yeah I can say that I used old google. But I would actually defer to someone 10-20 years older than myself, because I was pretty young during most of that time, and I have to say when I rewatch a lot of things from that era, I realize that 10-18 year old me, has some pretty rose colored glasses.

this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2026
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