Not sure how old 'old Google' was. There was a bug in the Contacts web app where the states were out of order. They were ordered by 2 digit state ID but shown as state name. A simple order by mixup in SQL. This meant users in New York couldn't tab to the state and start typing the state name to get the state. It was a filed bug. Known by people within Google who wanted it fixed. It was finally fixed this year after nearly a decade.