I think Facebook and other social networks will have a better chance of creating flourishing portals than Google or Bing because they already have a working com

I think Facebook and other social networks will have a better chance of creating flourishing portals than Google or Bing because they already have a working combo of people+data+interaction. The Google approach to portals would just be very AOL-ish. You are 100% right about people googling services and companies, though. Hell, we know for a fact that people google Google or Yahoo or even Bing... As long as you don't pick a offensive name, most people don't seem to mind about the domain name or tld.