Portals do not a tech company make. Yahoo called itself a media company, and many others emulated their all-in-one portal model with search as an after thought

Portals do not a tech company make. Yahoo called itself a media company, and many others emulated their all-in-one portal model with search as an after thought. Google focused only on their index and their PageRank algorithm to provide the best intent based search possible. They weren't in a contest with the tech companies. They were just a feature to Yahoo way back when.