A Portal is a Web site that offers a variety of Internet
services from a single, convenient location. Most
portals
offer the following free
services: search engine, subject director; news; sports and weather; free Web publishing services; reference tools such as yellow pages, stock quotes, and maps; shopping malls and auctions; and e-mail and other forms of online communications. When you connect to the Internet, the first Web page that is displayed often is a
portal. Popular portals include Alta Vista, AOL, Excite, GO.com, Hot Bot, Look Smart, Lycos, MSN, NCBi, Netscape, and Yahoo!.