Last week marked the end of an era, as Monster and CareerBuilder announced they were entering a marriage of equals, more or less undermining most of their sales messaging over the last two decades of this once powerful duopoly. Not so very long ago, of course, such a move would have been unthinkable.

When I first started out in this industry, Monster was an S&P 500 index stock (NYSE: MWW) and CareerBuilder was the only thing keeping the ersatz Tribune Company  from imploding during those early days of digital transformation, as newspapers and traditional publishing were suddenly displaced by anything with a .com in its brand name.

This was so long ago, in fact, everyone was too busy undergoing digital transformation to talk about what’s essentially a theoretical construct as something worth paying billable hours for. No one needed a consultant to figure out how to use that AOL CD that plumped the profits of magazine publishers – which, in retrospect, was an act of self immolation.

There were no management recommendations or metrics involved in the sudden influx of advertisers wanting to pedal their wares online, but there sure were a ton of innovators willing to take their money, and annoy users with pop up and display ads (it was so much worse when Flash was still supported, for the record).