GOOGLE WANTS TO BE A PORTAL? OF COURSE

Erick Schonfeld poses the question on whether "Google Secretly Want to Become A Portal?" Of course. I called it back in March 2005 right after they launched the initial version of their personalized news service. It hasn't been a secret for a while, and it's been called out by some others besides me.

Google likes to portray itself as the anti-portal. It's goal is to send people away from Google as fast as possible so that they can find what they are looking for. But if you pull together all of its point-products outside of search (e-mail, IM, Blogger, maps, etc.) it seems that it has portal-like aspirations. As the matrix at right (compiled by Tristan Louis) shows, the only things Google is missing from being a full-blown portal are an online calendar, auctions, and Internet access (and those are all probably coming soon in one form or another). (full post)