It is not dead, but Google and OpenAI are definitely strangling the internet - if it were for them, you would never find any new website beside the 30-50 that they promote. I learn about new things only by word of mouth - sometimes here on HN, or in random comments on the internet. Just today I learned from a phoronix comment about asterinas (https://asterinas.github.io/index.html), a new hobby++ OS written in Rust...

It is getting harder to find things, but it is not yet impossible, if you keep your eyes open. But if you blink you miss it...