When did we stop ‘surfing’ the Web?

According to Mark Davies’ Corpus of Contemporary English, use of the phrase "surf the Web" peaked right at the turn of the century. Why exactly did that happen?

“Very often when there’s a new technological development, we look for metaphorical language to try to explain it,” explains Ben Zimmer, a linguist and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal. That’s true of much of modern tech parlance -- from the idea of “tweeting” to the Web itself. The problem with these tech metaphors, Zimmer says, is that they don’t have a whole lot of staying power -- particularly when it comes to something like the Internet, where a very high premium is put on novelty and timeliness. Online, there is nothing less cool than lag. “In the case of ‘surfing the Web,’” Zimmer says, “what might have seemed like a fun and catchy metaphor in the late ’90s soon grew stale from overuse. And in techie talk, there’s nothing worse than sounding outdated.”