Last week the internet community got an interesting jolt to the system, as AOL’s new AOL.com beta 3 portal debuted for public review. The reaction was less than positive, shall we say, given its uncanny resemblance to Yahoo’s page. (More links here.) Even though I can’t be much more distant from the division at AOL that masterminded the new portal, as an AOL employee I really wanted to know what the thinking was behind the design, and how the Portals team felt about the situation that arose after its debut. David Liu, SVP of AOL Portals, was kind enough to answer a few of my questions to be published here:

Was this the work of the portals team, or an external design contractor?

The portals team executed the design.

Was the new portal intended to look like Yahoo’s front door? If so, why? If not, what was the design review process like on this, and how did it wind up looking the way it did?

The portal space is well established and, as such, there are more and more established design standards that all of the major portals are embracing. Also, just as is the case in many other consumer categories, we are leveraging some of the learnings of the market leader while we also find ways to differentiate.

The new AOL.com includes the following areas of differentiation: programming (our dynamic lead module has deeper content and now will be snaggable to 3rd party websites, such as Netvibes.com, etc.); local functionality (events/traffic/gas prices functionality) in its own default module; more useful “What’s Hot on AOL” module; and significantly faster page performance including the AJAX preview area.

We will get the basics right in order to bridge the gap on engagement per user as we continue on a path to establish leadership, not just catch up, over the next year.

Is other design candidates in the works, or is this what’s been settled on for eventual rollout?

This is our beta site. We will evaluate the beta feedback from our user base over the next few weeks and continue to evolve and improve the site throughout the beta period and make changes as necessary.

How will an approach like this help when so many are critical of AOL’s abilities to innovate in the web space?

We have to bring out great products that people love to use, period. You should be aware of our plans for the new myAOL.com (beta launching in June), which include a new personalized modular startpage with a focus on high quality programming feeds and functionality from AOL and sites around the web; a new, truly revolutionary image cloud content recommendations and delivery application called, Magnet; and a next-gen feedreader/bookmarking site that brings that activity to the mass market. Products like these will prove our ability to innovate in this space. After speaking with me last week, Mike Arrington wrote that he had seen some early demos and wireframes of our new products in development and thought they were impressive.

Well, there you have it, straight from the horse’s mouth. Thoughts?