[Moose Burger]

“Some ISPs WERE thinking about somehow favoring access to their “portal” site and inhibiting access to other portal sites...”

Do you mean like old time AOL? Before what we know now as “internet” there were providers that let you dial in to their servers, and then you had access to their content, and getting out to other networks was kind of “second rate” access. That didn’t stick. Competition gave direct access to “the net” (not “a portal”) and AOL eventually switched to what we know now.

[BikerJoe]

“Some ISPs WERE thinking about somehow favoring access to their “portal” site and inhibiting access to other portal sites...” Do you mean like old time AOL? Before what we know now as “internet” there were providers that let you dial in to their servers, and then you had access to their content, and getting out to other networks was kind of “second rate” access. That didn’t stick. Competition gave direct access to “the net” (not “a portal”) and AOL eventually switched to what we know now.

Yes, AOL is the prime example, but two modern-day examples are MSN and Yahoo, except they aren't also ISPs.