I think this is somewhat true. It's definitely more accessible, which makes it better in the sense that more people can use it because it is simpler.
It's not immediately obvious how to use a paper map. There's a lot of information in there that one has to either know or learn how to interpret. Sitting down with a stack of paper maps and planning out a route is more complicated than letting the googlemachine tell you what to do and how to get there. But, if you're a certain type of person, there is a definite thrill about making the plans, marking out your route, and doing this interactively with another person (who will be the navigator) that is a bit lost in the translation to digital.
While the googlemachine may tell you about all of the restaurants or interesting sites along the way (that it knows about, or that have paid for prominent placement), it won't give the sense of adventure that "we'll figure it out when we get there" does, even if "figuring it out" means asking the waitress at the un-googleable diner over pie.
Paper maps have a lot of advantages, but it takes work, and you have to be willing to accept that your seat-of-the-pants judgements about where to eat won't have the data-driven information of crowd-sourced reviews, so you might get a crappy meal or two.
I don't think anyone's arguing that the new ways are better. However, it's not clear that we're going in the right direction and instead we're stuck in a local maximum. Maybe if we took a step back and had mapping provided as an open source service with offline maps then we wouldn't have the current problems with Google Maps (real-time traffic data can be queried anonymously). Or maybe if we designed streets that were easier to navigate we wouldn't need maps in the first place.
The fact that we don't, show we think the new ways are, on balance, better.