Most traditional encyclopedias ceased to publish in the book form. Online encyclopedias are pretty much alive.

Their significance in public life was been almost completely replaced by Wikipedia, though

Wikipedia articles are not consumed like traditional encyclopedias anyway. I would say that encyclopedias became much less relevant in general, but being one of the first influencial online encyclopedias, Wikipedia came to be used as a volatile source of information even though it didn't strive to be one.

We used them for further research or quick look up of facts you should know. That seems to be how people use Wikipedia.

We used to copy articles out of them for homework. The more things change…

That's how people should use Wikipedia, but people generally don't do so in my understanding.

How do they use it then?

As a meager pedestrian, I consume Wikipedia instead of Encyclopedias - that I sometimes did when I was a kid

Idk if it was the first. Microsoft encarta was a pretty big player in that space back in the day.

Was Encarta ever released online? I only remember the CD-ROM version.

Yes, i think starting around 1999 so quite a bit after the cdrom releases. Admittedly that is only 2 years before wikipedia.

But not among the paying clientele.

Here in Denmark we have an online lexicon which is managed by (barely paid) scientists and experts. For every article you can see which scientist was involved in making it, what expert is responsible for the area etc. https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/

I suspect they're growing again, much like Usenet, RSS and the blogosphere. Because, you know. I try to check https://www.britannica.com / https://www.encyclopedia.com for political hot topics.