John Battelle is calling Google a Web 2.0 Portal with the arrival of Google Calander (which I’ve already used today).

Now, it’s moved quite systematically - with Base, Finance, Mail, and everything else - to being a company that is clearly about monetizing its core revenue asset - AdWords - on anything google.com related. That, my friends, is a portal. It’s a version 2.0 portal, but it’s a portal.

Now, is this a bad thing? Well, depends on your point of view. I think this is inevitable, and the next phase will be about traction with these new services. You don’t have to use Calendar, or Mail, but when you type "GOOG" or "YHOO" into the simple interface of Google these days, your first choice is now a Google page, not someone else’s. That’s a fundamental change, worth noting.

I don’t have a problem with Google going full out and declaring itself a Portal; people’s needs are constantly evolving and what made sense 10 years ago (concentrate only on search results) is not applicable anymore.   Besides, the portals of 10 years ago were pretty bad compared with the quality of Web Portals today.