Computers Today, October 16-31, 1998, Net

What's in a name? Quite a lot, say entrepreneurs, who are now wary of calling their sites portals.

Whether they're talking about portals or gateways, destinations or search engines, investors and entrepreneurs have gone portal crazy. But in spite of their getting rich off the idea of creating a "portal" to the global network, doesn't it appear funny that they don't like the word "portal"?

Is there anything wrong with the portal principle? It started out as a way to describe Web sites that want to be your first stop on the Internet. Most of them--Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek--used to be search engines, which were logical jumping-off points for a wide and chaotic Net.

Then these sites began to morph into something else, driven by a single economic reality: after a Yahoo visitor searches for "sports" and clicks away to ESPN SportsZone, Yahoo doesn't get paid for the next ad banner. Starwave does. So Excite, Yahoo, and company began to bring other people's content to their services. That way, the former search engines shared revenue for clicks with ESPN and other content providers.

By aggregating content, the Web sites formerly known as directories and search engines became something else, but it wasn't portals. Portals, as Yahoo's chief operating officer Jeff Mallet says, are entry points, a place you pass through, usually quickly. Like a doorway--exactly what he doesn't want Yahoo to be. "We see ourselves as more of a hub, with some services and content hosted here," Mallet says.

Hasley Minor, the chief executive officer of CNET Inc., which has a portal called Snap, claims to have been the first to use the word to describe an Internet service more than a year ago, when "no one understood what we were doing. [It] seemed to call up the idea of an entry point to the Internet." But such modest ambitions are ancient history. Now, Minor says to the Wall Street Journal, "I don't like it at all".

There is no doubt the very roots of the word 'portal' fail to accurately describe what the Internet giants want to become. Webster's New World Dictionary declares that 'portal' originates from the Latin 'portalis', meaning 'of a door'. The first definition--"a doorway, gate, or entrance, especially a large and imposing one"--certainly doesn't conjure up the kind of service that will draw people in. The second meaning is even worse: "any point or place of entry, as one where nerves, vessels, etc., enter an organ." The third is positively awful: "designating, of, or like the vein carrying blood from the intestines, stomach, etc. to the liver."

CNET's Minor prefers to call Snap a "search and navigation device". Lycos identifies itself as "Your Personal Internet Guide", although Robert Davis, CEO of the company, favours the term: "hub". Hub, we have already seen, is also favoured by Yahoo's Mallett. But "home" is a term Netscape Communications' Mike Homer insists was coined by his company for a browser button that existed long before the idea of a portal ever did. Steve Kirsch, founder of Infoseek, tried out the word "funnel" to describe his company's efforts. "It brings you to where you want to go and gets rid of the stuff you do not want," he explains.

A term that revenue-hungry Internet companies might like even more is "portal-to-portal pay", defined as "wages for workers based on total time spent from the moment of entering a mine, factory, etc. to the moment of leaving it".

For what matters most for the portals is improved earnings. Ace-search engine Lycos Inc., for instance, is expected to post a loss in contrast with the slight profit it had reported a year ago. Reports indicate that two other major search engines, Excite, and Infoseek, are expected to narrow their losses from 1997.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki recently came up with his own meaning of portal: "A hole in the Internet that shareholders pour money into." And, perhaps, this one might be the best definition of portal yet.

What's a Portal

It's the centre of a raging debate in the Internet world. Here are some answers.

Portal, the card game
A fantasy card game created by wizards of the Coast in Renton, Washington, Portal was introduced last year by the makers of "Magic: The Gathering". A spokeswoman says, "Magic is a complex and strategic game, so Portal was designed as a way to get new players into the game."

Portal, Arizona
Located in south-eastern Arizona, this small town has a general store, a post office and a few hundred people. It was given its name by settlers in the late 1800s because it sits at the mouth of the Cave Creek Canyon. "Nothing of any great consequence went on here," says a real estate broker, R.W. Morrow.

But the town does have lovely views of the Chiricahua Mountains and Sonoran Desert. "We used to be called the little Yosemite of Arizona," says Morrow, who put up pictures of the area on his site.

Portal, The Vein
In the human body, the portal vein is a very important piece of business. It carries blood from the intestines into the liver--serving, in other words, as the gateway to the liver.

That's why it's so serious if the vein becomes blocked. Portal hypertension--kind of like the body's version of an Internet slowdown caused by heavy traffic--can result. Ultimately, there is liver failure, which typically requires a transplant.

West Portal, San Francisco
This homely section in the southwest part of the city has cute houses, an eclectic shopping strip and proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The area is named after an underground street car that runs between West Portal and downtown. The opening of its huge tunnel, located at the top of West Portal Avenue, looks exactly like a portal.

"It's a perfect name for the place, since we are the gateway to the ocean for San Francisco," says Melissa Wahlia, a neighbourhood resident--and director, corporate communications, Excite, a California-based portal company. "Working in the Internet valley and living in San Francisco makes it impossible to get away from the word portal," she says.

Literary Saying
Finally, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Portal means as noun "a doorway or gate etc., esp. a large and elaborate one"; as adjective "of or relating to an aperture in an organ through which its associated vessels pass, or, of relating to a portal vein".