So, I'm younger, but there was absolutely a shift in thinking from web 1.0 to 2.0 in that 2006-2008 era. You could even call it the Ajaxian era.
http://ajaxian.com/I read that blog every day and the techniques and tooling (jquery/mootools/etc) absolutely shifted the thinking that birthed our "modern" react/vue style single page app.
This is like saying that Classical -> Baroque never happened because people still paint in a Classical style.