Why are people so interested in screwing up something that obviously works, and works so amazingly well in pursuit of absurd ideologies?
Google may have been 'mind blowing' but there is a bucket-load of things they simply seem unable to do (such as have a clear overall strategy, leading to the mess that is their approach to messaging), and in addition while they have clearly been hugely profitable, they may not give the best experience for some of their users (I've heard the phrase 'regularly cut off [their] own limbs' used). Whether this would be changed if their workforce was more diverse in terms of age (and therefore more experienced) we will never know, but I have my suspicions.
For example, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2014/01/14/reapi...
There have been specific times as well that being in our little bubble has hurt product decisions as well, although I don't think I'm supposed to go into those.
Everything else other than advertising has failed or is held up by that ad revenue. They may want to play world leaders, but they're an ad company.
Now - back to your point about absurd ideologies, it's against the US law to discriminate based on age. This ad company needs to play by the rules, regardless of how many ads it has sold.
How would the people filing the lawsuit know whether Google didn't hire them due to their age or for other reasons? I see posts all the time about people complaining they didn't get into company X because of some silly reason but frankly, unless you are the interviewer you likely will never know the reason. Shouldn't we wait to see the outcome of the case?
Indeed Google itself is not as diverse as we would like to be, but that's actually the reason we have these outreach programs: to try to get a more diverse applicant pool, which hopefully will translate to a more diverse workforce.
The average age being 29 doesn't surprise me because there are many more young applicants than there are older ones, since CS is getting more and more popular. Not only that but typically a larger company will have more junior developers than senior ones, and most junior developers are also more junior in age.
I don't know whether Google discriminates by age since I don't have the numbers, but I will say that Google takes diversity and inclusivity extremely seriously. I don't think a day goes by that I don't see a post asking for volunteers for some activity to promote diversity. That being the case, it would surprise me if we discriminate in a systemic way. For some individuals to do so unconsciously wouldn't surprise me just because it's human nature to be biased, although we do our best to unlearn that behavior.