Comparative Study Between Portals

Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide.Yahoo! was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was incorporated on March 1, 1995.As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is perhaps best known as the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwidefor its web portal, search engine, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, news, and social media websites and services.The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YAHOO) is an American public corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.The domain yahoo.com attracted at least 1.575 billion visitors annually by 2008.The global network of Yahoo! websites receives 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2007.It is the second most visited website in the U.S., and in the world.

MSN (The Microsoft Network) is a collection of Internet services provided by

Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1994, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.MSN, a part of Microsoft's Online Services Group, is a leading provider of Internet content and services.MSN.com offers many useful services to the users around the world but in order to enjoy all the services of MSN.com one must have a Microsoft Passport Network account. With the help of Microsoft Passport Network account, you can gain access to all the services of Microsoft Network facilities. Signing up at Microsoft Passport Network is completely free and after signing up you get access to all the services.This portal provides a wide range of news, information, and entertainment content, as well as online shopping and games. It also offers chat rooms, message boards, and other communications services, including Hotmail (Web-based e-mail) and instant messaging. The portal draws an audience of more than 460 million unique users per month through some 50 country-specific sites. Its suite of online content, e-mail, instant messaging, and other digital community applications and services is offered under the Windows Live brand.Microsoft Network has collaborated with many other service providers that offers services like MSN shopping, MSN Encarta, MSN space blog, MSN adCenter, MSN Premium that includes MSN Virus Guard and Firewall, etc. In the previous year 2006, Microsoft changed the name of MSN products with Windows Live name as a part of strategy to overcome the competition from other service providers. In the future, Microsoft might launch two new services of MSN i.e. MSN Explorer and MSN Groups.

Indiatimes.com is a news and information site destined to bring Indians around

the globe together. The value added services don’t just stop at news or information, the site offers far more superior features of telecom mobile services, e-commerce, Sports,travel, career,match making services, forums and much more to create an exquisite media product and news service rather then just a news website. The mission of the company is to provide best knowledge source and community service to the Indians entering digital revolution and customer satisfaction through innovation and quality.Indiatimes is the Internet subsidiary of The Times of India Group, under which, some of the largest websites in India - The Times of India, The Economic Times, Navbharat Times and Maharashtra Times operate. Indiatimes is the flagship brand of Times Internet Limited. Times Internet limited is in turn promoted by The Times Group, which has a 90% stake in it. The remaining 10% stake is held by Seqouia Capital, which invested in this company in 2005. Indiatimes Shopping claims it is India's largest online shopping platform featuring over 30,000 products for sale across a wide range of categories such as apparels, accessories, jewellery, consumer durables/electronics, books, music, movies, etc.Recently Indiatimes shopping had tied up with Land Mark and have listed 3 Million Books of various categories.

Yahoo as s earch engine Advan ta ge

Yahoo! is a broad search which has its own search engine database which is large and unique Yahoo! is better than MSN at determining if a link is a natural citation or not. Number of resuts are more than indiatimes and msn and takes lesser time to give results

Dis ad vant ag e Yahoo! has a ton of internal content and a paid inclusion program. Both of which give them incentive to bias search results toward commercial results Things like cheesy off topic reciprocal links still work great in Yahoo!

msn as s earc h en gine  

Adv anta ge

New to the search game but has large and unique database Automatic local search options available. Number of results are more than indiatimes

Dis advan ta ge It is bad at determining if a link is natural or artificial in nature Due to sucking at link analysis they place too much weight on the page content Heavily biased toward commercial results and likes bursty recent links New sites that are generally untrusted in other systems can rank quickly in MSN Search Things like cheesy off topic reciprocal links still work great in MSN Search

ind iatimes as s earc h eng in e Indiatimes is the second leading search portal of India. Uses Google to perform the web search

Disad vant ag e perfection of search results is only 30% http error occurs frequently when using the search results. Comparing with Yahoo and msn search no of results are less. Takes more time than Yahoo to give search results.

Yahoo new s

Ad vant ag e

  News categories are available with sub categories format Current news can be distinguished easily from others Yahoo news available in Hindi,Tamil,Gujrati,Kannada,Malayalam, Telegu,Punjabi

Disad vant ag e Available in documentation format.No audio visual available

MSN news  

Adv anta ge

News are provided hare as documentation format as well as vedio(audio visual) format,so its more attractive and effective. 

Disad vant ag e

Catagories are not broadly specified. It is quite hard to find current(immediate daily)news in msn as the date and time are not specified with the headlines

Indiatimes

new s

Adv anta ge

India times publishes the news form its own published news papers.Vedios are also provided in the vedio section under news. Current news available on front page News available in Hindi,Gujrati,Marathi.Infotech in Hindi n English,car news and reviews in English only

Disad vant ag e Not that much hard like msn but not that easy like yahoo to find

Yahoo shopping Dis ad vant ag e 

In India Yahoo! Shopping is not available.

MSN s hopping MSN is affiliated with ebay for shopping.

MSN s hopping Adv anta ge

Quantity of an item is limited by availability,not by rule. Item can be searched by different preference criteria

MSN s hopping Adv anta ge

It uses PaisaPay.Checks and money order no longer allowed. Selling,Buying,auction available Item can be searched by different search criteria

ind iatimes s hopping Ad vant ag e

If any item is not in their list customer can request for it.

ind iatimes s hopping Ad vant ag e

Price alert available. Several payment options are there.

indiatimes

shopping

Disad van ta ge

There is some prob in selling and auction in india times.Pages cant be displayed.Although optios are there.

indiatimes

sho pping

Dis ad vant ag e

There is a limitation of choosing quantity of an item although it is available.

Yahoo! Mail Online chatting is possible from email account. Mobile chat can be done from the account.

MSN mail Secured. Easy to use. Several services can be accessed.Chatting not possible. pam filter could use some improvement

ind iatimes ma il Total free email account Email setup has good security Contact portion is very good.Lots of details can be provided. Sms can be done from email account to mobile.10 per day. 3)priority can be imposed Priority can be imposed to mails. Slow

Some other common features of three portals They have their own astrology,matrimony,job,mobile,weather,games,finance,movies,vedios,pictures etc services.

Some s pecial f eatures Yahoo! It has Yahoo! Answer section

MSN Several blogs TV schedule news Short film services etc  

indiatim es It has a social networking site iTimes.com iDiva a section for woman Absolute radio etc.

Portal (among Yahoo,ms scen ario ? 

n,I ndiatimes ) fits bes t in I ndian

I think that for Indian scenario indiatimes.com is best if we consider it with Indian perspsctive among these three portals.If we consider other two portals Yahoo! and msn they are not Indian portals.They are global brands and so have a very wide range of services for global users.Keeping in mind of the all users they have to provide all types of services that should be suitable for the wide range.For this course they become much more global service for which it is not at all possible to that extend to satisfy a particular scenario to the full.In contrast indiatimes is Indian portal.It serves globally but its services are more suitable for Indian.An Indaian can have all the services with much more satisfaction rather than others.Considering the technical aspect those portals have more complicated technology than indiatimes.Those portals are not that simple as indiatimes so that general Indial people can handle it because Indian people are not that much tech savy till today.Simplicity and easiness of indiatimes attract Indian market.Most of all one can have quite enough information about any acute maters also.People can get into touch with more people of their own nation.People get much more services of their need and choice.So indiatimes is the portal which fits best in Indian scenario.

How does ind iatim es.com h ave an edge ov er it s competitors in the I ndian market?   indiatimes.com is a good site. It belongs to Times India group. With Indiatimes.com we can open free email account. Online marketing, news, Air ticket booking are available. It offers online news on economics and for this The Economic Times, a giant in Economic news is available. It is very reliable in shopping perspective.It has also wallet system, through which we can send and receive money. The most interesting features of this is that it offers to join BOOKS BUDDY, India Today Book Club. From this site we shall have good collections of books, Music CDs at a very attractive discount and gift. The gifts are also good. The payment system is very simple. The member can pay on delivery.indiatimes Shopping claims it is India's largest online shopping platform featuring over 30,000 products for sale across a wide range of categories such as apparels, accessories, jewellery, consumer durables/electronics, books, music, movies, etc. They also give a warranty period over a period of time.The items are available at heavy discount rates.The shipping within India is usually within 7 days.Recently Indiatimes shopping had tied up with Land Mark and have listed 3 Million Books of various categories.indiatimes is one of the biggest websites of India.It provides mail service which is very secure and emails reach you very fast.It provides news alerts and almost every thing you want.As per me no other Indian competitor of indiatimes provides all these facilities with that much quality as it provides.

Rank of the portals (Yahoo!,m sn,indiatimes my pref erence:

)according to

Here I will give my preferences regarding all over aspects as per me

Yahoo! I prefer Yahoo! most between these three portal.Because Being in the search game for many years Yahoo! became a highly regarding directory of sites,providing an extensive listing of websites from around the world. I believe Yahoo! places greater weight on on-the-page content Yahoo! is better than MSN at determining if a link is a natural citation or not.

in diatime s  Next I’ll prefer indiatimes Here I can satisfy my requirements(wrelated to different lifestyle)as I want. It seems easy for me to use. Shopping seems attractive here to me.

msn  Next I’ll prefer msn Here You might say that MSN opens many windows to the Internet it is bad at determining if a link is natural or artificial in nature and it has a heavy bias toward commercial results. Untrusted sites rank quickly in msn It neither seems user friendly nor seems attractive to me.