Why Google Is a Non-Portal
Like many other analysts,
I've had a hard time assessing whether Google belonged in the portal
category or not. If you were to look at a comparative feature set
between Google and a portal like Yahoo, it might seem that Google
should be classified as a portal. But if you look at the home pages of
both sites, it's apparent from the sparse interface that Google ain't
like the others. B-b-but, if all that good stuff isn't sreaming your
face like on most portals, then where is it?!
Like Prego, it's
"in there." But, under the surface, there's more to it than that. So
what is it precisely that makes Google a non-portal?
Jefferson Graham of USAToday provides a very useful clue, thanks to Marissa Meyer:
For
years, Google has said its focus was simply on search. Executives,
often in language that can only be described as Google-speak, insist it
still is.
"We want to be what the user wants, when he or she
wants it, as opposed to everything the user might want, even if they
don't," says Marissa Meyer, Google's director of consumer products.
"The
portals overwhelm the user by throwing all these different tools at
them," she says. "That's not us. We just want to get users to the
highest-quality content."
Despite all the portal-like features such as Gmail and online maps, Google is about supplying the right information when and how the user wants it,
in much the same way that AdWords ads are about serving up the product
or service that the user wants, when and how they want it. That may
seem like a small distinction on the surface, but with this new
perception, it makes some of Google's recent moves less puzzling.
And
here I was going to predict that Google was going to come out of the
closet as a portal sometime next year! Trust the big G to zig when the
others zag.
So what is Google, then? Um, how about an
anti-portal? A find engine? A -- stay with me now -- direct
information-on-demand engine (DIODE)? A search almanac? Argh, I dunno.
How about some help here?
