Google Calendar is here. Now, I don’t want to go on a random walk, but it’s time we called a spade a spade. Google is a portal, plain and simple. The company made its name, its brand, and its money on being one thing – a non judgmental service that quickly moved you from intent – your search query – to content – someone else’s page. 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.