Introduction

Despite having the most popular web search engine, and a host of very successful satellite projects, Google has never launched a true public web portal to accompany its search engine.

iGoogle is not a public portal in my dictionary.

What turns a website into a public web portal? First and foremost, editorial syndication — or in other words, featured content. Because each iGoogle port is utterly unique, it lacks the power of mass editorial content.

Interpretation

Google went a long way in making its web experience as personal and as customizable as possible. This approach greatly benefits most of the users. But in so doing, it is missing the “public bonfire” effect. (I’m using a Hebrew metaphor here)

A better way to explain this is simply to contrast the Google homepage (and the iGoogle portal) with successful public portals such as Yahoo, MSN, CNN, and Wikipedia, as well as Walla! and Ynet in the Israeli market. I also consider websites such as Technorati and Digg to fulfill the functionality of public portals.

Trying any one of these examples, 2 important things happen:

1. You feel connected to the community.
2. You’re exposed to content that you’d probably never bump into otherwise.

Technically speaking, although each user is being given the option to somewhat customize his or her experience, most of the content in these homepages is viewable to everyone by default. When you arrive at these portals, you know that you see exactly (more or less) what millions of other people see.

[ The second part of this post is due tomorrow... ]