Portals are really all about email; messaging; stock quotes; and – of course - search. Yahoo mail; AOL mail; Hotmail are the big drivers of clicks. It amazes me that the portals don’t double down on communications and make mail, messaging and the address book better; cleaner; faster; and spam free! What could possibly be more important?
News, music and movies sneak in a bit as content sites and some other functionality for video and audio playing. But specialists are winning here: Hulu, YouTube, ESPN, CNN, Google News, etc. etc. It is hard for a portal to win in specialist areas.