Vincent Granville argues that Google search is on a slow decline:
What has happened over the last few years is that many websites are now getting most of their traffic from sources other than Google. Google is no longer the main source of traffic for most websites, because webmasters pursue other avenues to generate relevant traffic, in particular social networks and newsletter – as it is easier to attract the right people and promote the right content through these channels. Think about this: How did you discover Data Science Central? For most recent members, the answer is not Google anymore. In that sense, Google has lost its monopoly when it comes to finding interesting information on the Internet. The reason is that Google pushes more and more search results from partners, their own products, possibly content that fits with its political agenda, big advertisers, old websites, big websites, and web spammers who find a way to get listed at the top. In the meanwhile, websites such as ours promote more and more articles from little high quality publishers and great bloggers that have a hard time getting decent traffic from Google. For them, we are a much bigger and better source of traffic, than Google.
I think this is a fairly optimistic view of the situation, as there’s a difference between “I want to learn about a topic” versus “I want to learn this specific thing.” I think Vincent’s argument is much stronger on the former, but when it comes to the latter, the first thing I hear people say is that they’re googling it.