The new way is MyWay.com?
The newest portal currently in beta is MyWay.com, a jab at Yahoo and the old way of doing things -- too many ads popping up and every single part of the home page real estate covered in content, services and ecommerce making sites like AOL and Yahoo feel like the equivalent of walking thru Times Square.
In comparison, according to this New York Times story (registration required), MyWay.com is "a zen rock garden of a portal with lots of features quietly presented and no discernable advertising. And no fee."
The site's revenue comes from text advertising links listed above its Web search results. The search results and the ads are provided by Google.
Most improbable about MyWay is its creator, Bulldog Holdings, the owner of Iwon .com, considered by some to be perhaps the most garish and crass of all the portals [founded by two HBS classmates, Jonas Steinman and Bill Daugherty, who also acquired the name and assets of Excite last year]. Iwon's premise is that users earn entries into a sweepstakes with every click. It was among the earliest users of large banner advertisements and those that drive animated minivans and such in front of whatever users want to read.
...Over the summer, they began to look around for yet another site to start.
"We were bantering back and forth for weeks about what the next big thing would be," said Mr. Daugherty. "Jonas said, `Why not an ad-free portal?' "
...Unlike Iwon.com, Bulldog plans little advertising for MyWay. But Mr. Steinman said he took inspiration from another simple site with nothing more than text ads. "Google spent nothing on marketing," he said, "and look where they are."