There’s always a link to “google news” if I want it, but is there any part of google that acts as a “portal”.
My excite account, I have my stocks, the scores I want, links to the newspapers I read, the weather, my movies, and a single click gets me to email.
So, is there any kind of google portal that I can configure and jump in and out of my gmail with?
I looked at their sports news yesterday, and it was “tour de spain”, “uefa cup”, “ryder cup”, “world cup hockey”, “cricket” and then “formula 1”.
In the business section, there wasn’t even a place to put in a stock symbol to get a quote.
The mail is nice. There are little things, like no “reply” button at the top of the message. WTF? And there’s no “trash” button – you need to use the drop-down. I realize they want us to archive instead of delete, but geez, I’d like to have the option.
Short Answer: No. Not really, google isn’t really a portal like I think you mean.
Put the symbol in Googles normal search box, most (all?) valid stock symbols will bring up ‘Stock Charts/Quotes for X’ as one of the first links.
This is a lot of the way Google works, it’s for searching rather than browsing. This appears to be something they want to sell as a fundamental ‘way’ of doing things. Hence google is your portal, in that you’re one search away from anything.
I’d expect them to add Gmail to the google toolbar soonish so that there’s a quick way to get to it.
I hadn’t noticed the lack of a reply at the top, yup that’s annoying. The lack of an easy “trash” button goes back to them pushing the search-not-browse thing which I’m prepared to try and see how it goes.
But all in all the functionaliy’s there, it’s just a few keystrokes/clicks further than other similar sites. This is googles way, they think it’ll work and I think they probably think that people who don’t like it will just not use it.
Actually on this site, the guy lays out (what he thinks) is a good reason not to have a portal.
I don’t necessarily buy what he says though. He makes it sound like if google had a portal, then they would be forced to be obnoxious and run irrelevant ads like other portals.
I figure that google should be able to make a nice portal while avoiding that stuff.
Further, if I go to “google news” it’s not search-based. It’s basically operating like my excite news without giving me the ability to customize.
I guess I figure that with gmail, they should start offering a portal. Having a portal doesn’t mean they automatically lose all “searching cred” no more than offering email does.
If you click on the word “argue” in that first link, there’s a guy arguing what I am, but I don’t think he’s too persuasive either.
True, reading around a bit it does seem like various people expect google to launch some sort of portal system at some point.
Google labs has a personalised search thing (here) which might be the first step to customisable portal pages. It really depends what they want to do and where they want to go.
The thing with google news is that it’s billed as completely automated and is a ‘snapshot’ of the current news on the web. Having said that I see no reason why they couldn’t allow you to apply search filters over it and have the site remember them.
I’d guess that google will build up a following with unique login details (as they’re doing very well) with gmail and then start adding other functionality onto that to encourage other people that haven’t made the switch.
GMail and Google Alerts can work together to serve as a news clipping service, which I find to be more efficient than using a portal (YMMV). Try a few searches on Google News until you find a set of keywords that gets you all the articles you want. For example, I’ve got a friend in the 3d Battalion, 7th Marines over near Fallujah right now, so whenever an article passes through that matches my search, I get it in my GMail inbox. With GMail’s filters, it comes into my box already labeled for archiving.
For what it’s worth, my search is
(3BN OR (3d OR 3rd OR third) AND (Battalion OR Bn)) AND ((7th OR Seventh) AND (Marines) OR 7MAR)
Which finds pretty much any of the multiple ways someone could write “third battalion, seventh marines.” I get about five articles a week, and occasionally pick up duplicates when a local paper’s story gets picked up by the AP. I also track news about my hometown. You can get it delivered weekly, daily, or as it happens. I prefer the daily feed.