There seems to be a general agreement that portals on the Internet originated withYahoo!, which began as a "home-brewed lists of favorite links" and developed into a directory of websites organized by subject categories.⁷ Yahoo! further widened its scope to include free e-mail and messenger services along with news, sport, weather and entertainment features and a portal, My Yahoo! which provides web users with the option of customizing their own web page. Options include customization of content, such as news stories, weather information, and horoscopes, and there is also an attempt to include information of relevance to a particular employment sector. A user can made decisions about the layout and colour of the page and the ability to add or delete pages. A personal username and ID ensure privacy.

Other examples of Web portals include My MSN and Excite. This type of portal is often described as a "horizontal" portal because it serves a wide range of users with different interests and needs. According to Ali Jafari and Mark Sheehan, these types of portal "bring a measure of organization to the otherwise chaotic Internet and serve as an individual's point of entry into that vast information space."⁸ This is a useful tool but customization is limited and for a user with very specific information needs, a more sophisticated type of portal is necessary.