E-Trade is discounting fees to the likes of Microsoft, Boeing and Oracle for the right to steer 1 million employees seeking information on their stock options through the main E-Trade portal.

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Microsoft's New Year's buyout of the most popular free E-mail provider, HotMail, is another sure sign that the Redmond giant is taking its portal strategy very seriously indeed.

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E-GM will lead the charge with a dramatic expansion of the OnStar technology, including a voice-activated portal called MyOnStar Virtual Advisor.

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In the fall of 1998 E-Trade rolled out its first financial planning portal, Destination E-Trade.

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Cramlington Community High in Northumberland encourages parents to e-mail teachers to discuss children's progress, and the Cardinal Wiseman Catholic Technology College in Birmingham has a website with an "e-portal" for parents.

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The Softbank empire includes a 27% stake in E-Trade, 28% of top Web portal Yahoo and 85% ownership of ZDNet.

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Dotsafe will offer participating schools filtering technology for life, as well as personalized e-mail accounts for every student, a school Web page and the guarantee that there will be no advertising on portal pages.

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This Federal Express disciple, who became chief executive of E-Trade in March 1996 (just as it was launching its online trading portal), insists the firm has moved beyond the online brokerage business to a new battlefront: unified online finance.

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