Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: July 17, 2003 (Previously published)
Section: Viewpoints

Ok, who has seen Yahoo!'s stock rise to $120 a share? Show of hands will be fine. That many? Is this insane or what? Don't get me wrong. I love Yahoo! It is my primary search engine when I know what I am looking for specifically like a company or government agency. (I use HotBot for those things like software drivers, etc.) Come on, though. The price is asinine. I read an article that described that if you look at the outstanding shares of Yahoo! and then look at the amount of shares traded you could make an argument that each outstanding share in play was traded four times during the week. No one was buying it to hold they were buying it to make money.

Stock market nuts aside, what in the heck is going on with this portal business? I feel like a pioneer on the net. I was one of the first to use ICQ. I was one of the first to use Real Audio. I have been on the waves of most of the cool things to do on the net. This included my usage of MyYahoo! when it debuted.

For those who are uninitiated, MyYahoo! basically allowed you to take a blank screen and add what you wanted to see in a homepage in a modular fashion. You could have news, weather, stock prices, sports, horoscopes, etc. show up as your homepage. This was a very novel, and frankly, awesome idea. I diligently built a page that would serve me when I logged on. Since I am a news freak I loved it as the page would automatically update every 15 minutes. I have since moved up to MyExcite. Excite has a really horrible search engine, but they have gotten it right with MyExcite! Not only can I have news, stocks, sports, etc. on my page, but I can set reminders, jot notes and get TV listings. The cool thing about this is the information travels with me. Whether I am at work or at home I can see my reminders and a simple todo list. Genius!

From this concept the portal theory has evolved. Everyone now wants to be your homepage, portal, on the internet. They believe that by being the gateway to what you do on the internet they can increase page count and thereby drive up revenues. This seems like a logical thing for sites like Yahoo! and Excite to pursue as they are natural extension of this. They have the back office built already to support this with information and extras such as e-mail and chat ready to go.

As soon as Yahoo! and Excite perfected this idea others wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Netscape is trying to make money anyway it can now that it has lost the internet battle with Microsoft. It is crafting its homepage, which comes up by default when you start a fresh copy of Navigator, to be a portal. This is a stretch, but I can understand it.

What I can't understand are sites that rocked with information and useful content moving towards this idea. Don't get me wrong. I am used to websites changing their look or feel. But when you switch the basic reason as site exists not through its content, but its presentation I have to draw the line. Its akin to taking the good stuff and making you wade through over pompous commercial aspirations to get to it.

Recently, one of my all time favorite sites switched to this portal look and feel. ZDNet, I believe, had been one of the long time leaders in what a good web site should be. I could access the entire site from their homepage in two clicks. I was always presented with neat stories and information I could go to with one click. Very clean and presented well. Of course, ZDNet is loosing money by the bucket loads so they jumped on the portal bandwagon. When you visit their site now the unique and functional look they sported has been replaced with a spartan, devastatingly complex mish mash of categories and options. It's like they took a 1998 Sports Car and turned it into a Model T. Instead of news stories you are greeted with a few headlines. Instead of the clever, intuitive graphics they used to have to draw you to stories you have a one line blurb of text. Instead of being able to select from one of their print magazine through a download menu or image map you have to look at a site map or drill down a menu or two. I dare anyone to find Computer Shopper from the main menu. Isn't that a ZD magazine anymore?

Oh, of course, they have an icon for free e-mail and that all important stock tracking function. Egads! Didn't anyone at ZDNet actually look at MyYahoo! or MyExcite? Why invent the wheel when someone else already has done a marvelous job? ZDNet really blew it with this move. Within two months I predict they'll be back to their old form as we watch their site ranking fall in the polls.

ZDNet isn't the only media conglomerate to drink from the pail of peyote. CMPNet, the braintrust that bought Byte Magazine then promptly discontinued it, brings us the latest portal entrant. What a snoozer. Keep in mind that CMPNet's webmaster weren't exactly artistic or functional prodigies before the switch to being a portal. I did find their site an excellent source of in-depth technical news, unlike ZDNet which seemed to be sugar coating sugar cereal. That is what ticked me off the most about this site changing. They were where I went for hard news, thoughtful insight and clear analysis. Now I get a Yahoo! look alike menu with, oh yeah, that all important offer for free e-mail. Luckily, they kept one click links to all their magazines and include graphics to attract you to stories. This is their saving grace over ZDNet. Maybe in some freak trade of talent CMPNet and ZDNet switched designers.

Don't think I am just sitting here and whining. I have complained to both ZDNet and CMPNet. ZDNet didn't respond. CMPNet sent me a message within 15 minutes of my mail message. They indicated that the news and in-depth stories I became accustomed to seeing was now located on TechWeb. I'll be darned, it is. This isn't everything that was on the old page, but it is 75% of what I wanted.

You can only have so many portals. They'll become like word processors to people. Folks will either like MyYahoo! or MyExcite or even Netscape's NetCenter and make them their homepage. No one will ever make ZDNet or CMPNet their homepages and that includes their respective employees!

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