Not too long ago, job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs were primed to put newspapers out of business. Surprisingly, now it seems that search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo! are set to dethrone both newspapers and job sites.

As revenues and readership for newspapers have been on a consistent downward spiral since the birth of the Internet, their grip on classified advertising has been a major contributor.

Particularly job postings.

Since 1995, job sites have done an effective job of steadily taking dollars away from a once almighty print monopoly. As a result, online job classifieds were poised to take down print listing who could never compete with bargain basement price-points.

However, another revolution was quietly occuring that today is poised to put job sites on the defensive.

Search engines and Craigslist happened.

Craigslist is, for the most part, a free service for online classifeds. By allowing to post jobs for free in all but three of its local markets, Craigslist has quickly become a site of choice for local job seekers and employers alike. Even in markets where employers pay - New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco - prices remain well under $100 per listing.

Despite its low pricing scheme, Craigslist remains a very profitable business, generating millions of dollars with only 18 empoyees.

Search engines like Google, likewise, have discovered that providing free search content pays off as long as you provide targeted pay-per-click advertising.

In light of this model, vertical search for jobs is taking off. First, with players like FlipDog and GrassIsGreener, and now with players like SimplyHired and Indeed.com. Yahoo! - utilizing its HotJobs offering - is now aggregating job listings from all over the Net.

As a result, most experts predict Google will soon launch a similar offering that allows users to access job listings from a variety of sources, including job sites like Monster and corporate site listings.

Google will provide the content at no charge, while making money from its AdWords, pay-per-click model.

Both Craiglist and search engines paint a picture of commoditized job listings that eventually no company will have to pay big money to have accessed. Most likely, job postings will be driven to zero. Additionally, job seekers are primed to have a central point to access a large number of listings.

As a result, it seems that search engines (Google, Yahoo!) and low-priced open source solutions (Craigslist) hold the key to accessing job information in the future.

Where newspapers and job boards fit into this equation is anyone's guess.

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