Over in CNNMoney.com, Kevin Kellehar is trying to argue that Google is a really a web portal (see Face it Google, You’re a Portal). The logic is that if you aggregate content on the web, then yes, you are a portal. Yahoo and MSN are web portals too, but we kinda knew that. But Google? With just a search field and a button? That’s a portal?
Well I disagree with Mr. Kellehar that Google is a portal. Google, the company, has lots of software that could be considered portal-ish. iGoogle and Google+ come to mind as more true portal offerings. Mr. Kellehar says, “At the end of the day, a portal is simply a suite of features combined to create a gateway to web content – whether it’s a web directory like Excite, a cluttered home page like Yahoo or a mobile platform like Android. The goal is to get users to come to you when they want to navigate the web, and to take a cut of the revenue once you help them get there.”
But for me a portal is much more than just a gateway to web content. Here are a few things I think portals should do:
- A portal aggregates content AND presents it in a nice clean way to me. I want to have images and text on the page. A search results page usually is just a long list of links.
- A portal is something that I can have a say in how the page is displayed to me. I can move content around and I can add new content when I want to see it. I can also delete content when I no longer care for it.
- A portal lets me combine content and applications when I want to. I want to be able to run applications alongside regular content. I want to run a video, but while it goes through a one minute commercial, I want to scan other headlines for interesting information.
In short, a portal is an experience, while a directory list or a page of search results is just a task completed.
Now, I’m not picking on Google’s search, because I think its great! I use it constantly throughout the day to find information. But when I want to see aggregated content on a page, I turn to my portal (Yahoo in my case) for that.
Before I read your post and Kevin’s article, I only would have referred to iGoogle as the portal-like option from Google. But in a loose definition, the suite of Google sites could easily be considered as a portal.
Think of the plain search page as just the default ‘home’ page (which many users rarely see thanks to search bars and Chrome’s omnibox). I have a top nav that takes me to other Google features, and they propagate my search context as appropriate. If I’m logged in, I also get personalization (links vary, notifications/alerts, etc). Those are all “portal” features.
How many people really want a customizable portal-like home page anyway? Maybe I’m wrong, but that need seems to be diminishing because there are other ways people are getting their info fed to them (mobile devices and various reader apps).
I used Yahoo as my personal portal ages ago. I liked it, but never loved it, and there was nothing better at the time. Then I switched to Google and started using iGoogle. iGoogle was no worse to me, but I quickly stopped using that also. Today it’s all about search and other readers (RSS) for me, which means I’m all about Chrome and multiple Google apps. My iPhone and iPad are more of a portal to me than iGoogle or Yahoo ever were.
Now, if we could just get everyone off of YIM I could stop using my Yahoo account entirely!
I hear you Dave. I have had my iPad for about 3 months and it is more of my goto place anymore. I think I’m on it (Feedler and Flipbook) 90% versus Yahoo 10%.
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