Many, including the pioneer Yahoo, evolved into Web portals that include searches, free e-mail, communities for people with similar interests to gather, shopping, news and more. Those free services for users, though, cost money to maintain. So advertising dots the virtual landscape. Most of it is easy to spot, but some may not be readily apparent. Search is used as a loss-leader at portals.
Some critics say the drive for profitability has come at a cost.
Companies deny those charges, saying they haven't neglected search services in their pursuit of profits. Including more pages in their search territory, though, isn't necessarily the right answer. Exactly, says Sergey Brin, president of Google Inc., one of the hottest new search engines. Brin said Google was born out of his frustration with the mishmash of results from searches, so he and Larry Page started work on it about four years ago at the Stanford University Computer Science Department. Now, Google's ready to make its name in the search engine field, but not as a portal, said Brin, president of the Mountain View, Calif., company.