As everyone in this business is well aware of by now, Google unleashed its instant messaging service. But this brings to mind a question, now that Google offers a news site and an instant messaging service and Gmail and a MyGoogle site does this still just make Google a search engine?
Merriam-Webster had several definitions for the word search. For purposes of the story, I chose:
to look into or over carefully or thoroughly in an effort to find or discover something: as a : to examine in seeking something b : to look through or explore by inspecting possible places of concealment or investigating suspicious circumstances c : to read thoroughly : CHECK; especially : to examine a public record or register for information about d : to examine for articles concealed on the person e : to look at as if to discover or penetrate intention or nature.
Ok, Google can do all of these with their search engine certainly. But then again, so can MSN, Yahoo, Jeeves, AOL, Alta Vista and others. This function definitely isn’t unique to Google although they’ve quickly developed the reputation as being best at it.
Some of these services do offer other features though. Google, MSN, Yahoo and AOL, as certainly some of the most visible players in this business offer many other services other than just search. They all offer instant messaging, they all offer email, they all personalized home pages and access to news feeds of all types. MSN, Yahoo and AOL are all considered portals yet Google maintains they are not. Is there a reason?
AOL, Yahoo and MSN generally have more connections to multimedia content like video from television or the recent shuttle launch, things like that and Google did not. But Google’s been looking into other things. Speculation is abound as Google prepares for their next stock offering which will add about $4 billion to their already sizeable $3billion. What are they going to do with all that cash? They might just be doing this to get a really impressive chef but they probably have a few other plans.
The point is that Google has a lot of pans in the fire and some of them don’t have that much to do with search. The IM was certainly add revenues. The other three make a ton of money off their instant messaging services but in moving in that direction, Google moves farther away from just being a search engine and more toward being a portal. One can assume this will soon be available for cell phones as part of their mobile package at some point in the future.
At any rate, Google is now more than search. But are they a portal? When doing a comparison with other portals, one can safely say yeah, they are. In the end, the portal direction is where the revenues are and in the end, that’s what it’s all about anyway. Google is very good at what they do but they are a portal.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
