Ah, so they are going ‘Portal’ after all it would seem! This is a a little bit of a shock. Still, I am not too sure people are going to care about something that Yahoo has offered for much longer. And that my friends, is your own space on the portal itself.

If there was a footnote to Google’s “Do no evil” party line, it might be: “We’re just a search engine, folks.” But since its inception, it has slowly and steadily added features and services outside the scope of its mantra. I’ve used Google Local to track down the nearest Taco Bell and Froogle to get the best price on gadgetry. I’ve even participated in a trivia contest to win what was then a rare and highly coveted Gmail invite. But today in a move that is viewed as a direct challenge to the Web portals, Google announced Fusion, a feature that will allow users to personalize some of the world’s most valuable whitespace.

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said Fusion came about not for competitive reasons, but as a result of user demand.

“It turns out that people really want a personalized Google,” he said in an interview. “They want Google, but they want it to be their Google.” [Read the rest]