One way to measure the progress of web search technology is by looking at the set of knowledge the average person doesn't bother learning about until they need it. The better the commodity search engine, the less effort people will expend to "pre-learn" things before they really need to know it, because they can depend on the knowledge always being quickly accessible.

These days nobody bothers memorizing the population of a country or when the seasons start, nor friends' addresses or phone numbers. But I still find myself wanting to learn more abstract, long-form topics because they can't simply be looked up "just in time" ... yet.