Will Google become more Portal-like if Others Continue Gaining

The fast loading non-distracting Google Homepage was/is very useful for bare bones searching
but
it seems that the Portal-entertainment-like quality of Yahoo and MSN * and the Links on their homepages may actually ATTRACT and PUSH ideas and tidbits to a visitor**

* Whether the New MSN Stays a Portal will be interesting (Feb 1st)
** Google has Labs, put you have to voluntarily enter to seek ​

If this Concept takes off to the point of obvious gains in search traffic
and their SERPS also become more relevant

http://www.keynote.com/news_events/releases_2005/05jan13.html

- Will Google become influenced/tempted to change?

 

They have already changed, they are not pure search anymore, they have Google answers, Google desktop search, Gmail, Google news, Orkut, toolbar, now they are offering the Google search appliance to small business.

Soon to be a portal for small business computing offering an ASP data center CPU to wireless customers.

 

No, they know what works and the lack of portal crap is what will help them stay #1.

 

I can't see them going down that route, it just doen't seem like a Google thing. But it wouldn't surprise me if they did, they have a load of stuff they could use already, like GMail, Groups, news, etc. Time will tell I suppose.

 

What is Froogle and Search appliance then?

 

The Search appliance always seemed a likely idea to me, if you have a great technology why not sell it in different markets. Froogle imo is a lot more revenue driven, though I've not used it seriously.

 

Gmail is part of the ASP OS that Google will offer to mobile users down the road, folks will store files directly on Google servers and have no need for a CPU, just a wireless device to interact with Google for all the office type applications they get from Windows now.

Search appliance is going to be offered to small businesses and Google is going to get into the enterprise search game or try to. They reduced the price of it from 20 grand to under 5 grand.

 

Interesting times ahead, I do like those bright yellow Google search boxes

 

Google is selling computing power and software, see the link below, they are not just a stand alone search engine anymore.

http://www.bizreport.com/news/8578/

They could merge with IBM one day folks.