Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I'm not saying searching didn't work, or doesn't even work today, I'm just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn't is simply wrong and / or lying.
You shouldn't just trust whatever the AI says
And you also shouldn't just trust random things you read on the internet, so I'm not sure exactly what point you are making here. I've never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don't know how long I've been on the internet for.