SSP wonders about the difference between a search engine and a portal and why Google does not like to be called a portal.

The word portal is, perhaps, one of the most overhyped and misused term in E-Commerce. Generally speaking, a portal is a door and hence, is thought of a starting point of one's exploration of the Web. Over time, this term has acquired a specific meaning in E-Commerce where it is used to describe a page that provides a lot of content and many applications to encourage diverse use of the Web. Yahoo has been regarded as the prototypical portal.

Google does not like to be compared to Yahoo. Google has long prided itself on being a un-Yahoo. They have hundreds of links- we have a clean page. The problem is that the clean page idea may not be sustainable and Googleites cannot handle this. They would perceive it as a failure of sorts. This is the fundamental cross-roads that Google finds itself at.

So, in short, Google is a portal. But, it is in utter denial about it.