‘I miss old Google’: readers tell us how they search the internet in the age of AI

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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www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/23/google-readers-respond-ai-overview-internet-searches

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:

en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_median_ag…

• 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.

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?