Google has long claimed that it has no interest in being a portal like Yahoo or MSN. In a USA Today interview last December, its director of consumer products, Marissa Mayer, said: “The portals overwhelm the user by throwing all these different tools at them. That’s not us … There’s too much information now, and sorting or categorizing it doesn’t work anymore. The only way to find it is via search.”

I guess even a company whose motto is “do no evil” is allowed to lie a little bit now and then. Late Thursday, Google launched a “personalized home page,” or, as it’s commonly known, a portal. Just like MyYahoo and its ilk, the Google portal – codenamed Fusion – throws different tools at you, allowing you to arrange various bits of information, such as news headlines and local weather reports, on Google’s previously pristine search page. In announcing the portal, Mayer did a little fancy verbal footwork: “We really hope to have this not necessarily be a platform … but rather to help users navigate the web better.” Portal? Platform? Who cares?

To Google’s credit, everyone’s free to choose whether to keep the simple search page or use the portal version. (The default, for the time being at least, continues to be the traditional page.) But what’s really neat is the ease with which you can move around the elements of the personalized page. Google uses a fluid drag-and-drop interface that is much more advanced (in its simplicity) than what you’ll find at, say, MyYahoo. It’s yet another sign of the subtle revolution in web design that will make the browser a more effective tool for all sorts of computing.