Google mobile is almost a portal site

Google mobile is almost a portal site…but I thought google was the anti portal site.

Portal sites like O2 active, Orange world and Voda Live have been discredited, too clunky.

The mobile.google.com is different. It is much better in terms of layout and features. Nonetheless its clear that it is going in a certain direction and that direction is one where the users never leaves, Google controls everything, just like a the old portal idea, that bothers me.

There should be something about mobile content that makes it uniquely suited to being mobile. That is, content that is not just a mobile version of web content. I would like to see a mobile google that finds mobile content well. The light touch that made google so successful in the first place should be there on google mobile too. Really good mobile search is very very hard to do. Sticking in a whole load of features instead doesn’t solve the problem.

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