I have been playing around with the new Google Portal and the experience is interesting but unmoving.

I like being able to drag-and-drop live content around on the Google portal page. The interface and environment needs a lot of work but that probably won’t happen because Google loves ugly!
If you want a mature portal interface, Yahoo! Plus is a real knockout.

I find Yahoo! Plus the easiest portal to manage. The Plus version, at least, looks really good.
I exclusively use the Yahoo! Plus beta RSS feeds for all my news now. I love seeing the minute and hourly feeds updates instead of the conventional dry once-a-day news updates I used to see there.
Give the Google portal a try. You might like it.
Then try Yahoo! Plus. You’ll like it better.