The rumor is that Google internally tested Google Finance through two full versions before releasing it today, and the extra attention shows. This is a great looking product overall. And they’ve taken things at least a step further than Yahoo Finance in its current form.
The included information is similar to Yahoo Finance for public companies (stuff that can be scoured from public SEC reports and company related news), but there are some key new features:
- Use of Flash for charts to change features like timeline on the fly; drag and drop to move back in time
- Use of Ajax on the home page to switch between market views (Nasdaq, NYSE, etc.)
- Inclusion of recent blog entries relating to the company (see link in first bullet above)
- Private company information
The flash charts are loading very slowly right now, i assume this will improve. The last bullet above is really interesting - they’ve created some original content for private companies and have indexed more from the web. Google Finance information will also be displayed at the top of normal seach results for public companies, in what they call the One Box area.
Om says Google Finance is dissapointing and is little more than a “me too” on Yahoo. But in this case I disagree and am happy to give a nod to Google - Other than the very slow Flash charts, I like it, and I think this will push Yahoo to move its own finance property forward.
More on Google Finance at John Battelle, SEW and Memeorandum.
I liked it too.. Search engine is great! Just write the company name and it finds the right quote! This was annoying in Yahoo Finance.
i wonder if google is the type of company to produce “original content”, as you say. doing a quick quoted search on some of their summaries, it looks like almost all summary and other data is available at hoovers.com. i assume they license their existing database of company info.
i like the charts, and the presentation, as a whole, is clear and concise. i saw a bug or two with the flash interface, but then again, it *is* it’s first day out.
not focusing on the financial information, it’s a nice interface for company info browsing.
Few cool features:
- The company news events are tagged and marked on the Chart
- In the management section just mouse-over on the name to see that persoons photograph,boi and more
- Adding to Portfolio is very simple
Feature righ AJAX based app
It’s ultra cool
It could just be me, but this seems significant… Seems to me like it’s the first Google site which isn’t either made up of ‘user’, or at least significantly and explicitly ‘external’ content (mail, usenet, video, etc.), or designed to send you to another site (web, froogle, etc.).
That is, this seems like the first time Google is publishing significant content under their own name, on their own site. Obviously, they are just republishing information available elsewhere, but this time they’re doing it in a style which suggests it’s their info. To put it another way, this isn’t a search engine, as such, and isn’t a service, as such - it’s a publication in its own right.
Google Finance is a lot better than every other Finance Site. Most Broker pages or Bank pages are very slow and complicated to handle. Google is straight forward as always - all what you need in one small package! Very nice!
I like the charts and the inclusion of blogs, but I’ll be honest, I was expecting a social aspect to Google Finance kind of like we’re doing at StockTickr. (stock tagging, RSS feeds, AJAX stock charts, shared watchlists, “TradeRank”, etc).
wow, I think the more applications google rolls out the less they are worth… it sounds counter-intuitive I know.
Google is showing HOW FAR ahead microsoft’s live.com and yahoo.com are in terms of creating user experience.
It just shows the luster is coming off, they are getting down to the business of creating a portal and they do not seem to have any new ideas.
The killer feature of Yahoo! Finance that Google’s site appears to lack is the ability to manage multiple portfolios. This allows investors to create multiple “what-if” scenarios to test out different strategies, and is the only reason an investor would use a site like this - after all, all the data is likely available from whatever brokerage site they’re using.
will diffuse even more traffic away from the major business media producers by pointing GF users to whatever news article or blog entry that shows up in the latest 5 results for each ticker. Maybe users will care, and flock to quality/brand directly, or maybe they will not, which will be yet another blow to the big-brand media companies spending millions a year to create original content.
#7, I agree that this is significant but disagree that this is their content.
Every section/bucket on the quote pages is pulled from data sources outside of Google. With that being said, they are doing a great job at integrating the content seamlessly and clearly have developed something far better then what the other “majors” are offering.
“Google Finance is a lot better than every other Finance Site.”
It’s wholey lacking in any of the useful tools required by actual stock pickers. Where’s the volume and volatility data? Statistics? Studies? Can I back test an automated trading strategy? Can I see how much S&P futures have moved in the last 24 hours? And most important: why can’t I even look up the price-action of light sweet crude, or short term interst rates, upon which almost everything else depends?
Why does Google put the “traditional news” links far above the “blog posts” links in their search results at Google Finance? I wish they’d let me merge the two categories. Oh, and where’s the offical blog for GFinance?
Thanks for the explanation of this exciting new site.
This version of the site is worse than useless. There are no technical tools. Dividend payouts appear nowhere on the main stock screen. You’d have to be an idiot to miss that. It seems that Google’s mission is going from “Do no harm, unless it’s to support a repressive regime” to “We really have no clue anymore, but we’ll do whatever’s hot at TechCrunch”.
Will dividends be automatically added to holdings? Will the costs basis of shares be adjusted? MSN’s MoneyCentral still is the best for anyone who doesn’t do a lot of trading. If you trade a lot, you need more specialized software.
I too don’t find this very impressive, right out of the box.
The news overlay is cool feature, but with no technical charting, and “historical” data only to 2001, it seems weak. At this point, it’s certainly not for serious traders.
I think the sliders are pretty sexy and while the feature may seem very minor in the big picture I think they will set Google Finance apart from Yahoo, MSN & CNN Money for the short term.
Michael, I agree, it’s OK. I do like how it links a news item with a point on the Flash graph. Also, where’s the RSS support? Yahoo Finance can generate news per ticker via RSS. I hope Google gets that one down a little more pat before going final.
Summary from financial bloggers: http://internetstockblog.com/article/7947
Overall, nice interface and layout, but the one key feature of any financial site, the portfolio, is seriously lacking. No upper and lower limits, no grouping, no multi thumbnail view. Aside from the Flash graphs, there’s not much here. The Google fan-boys are definitely out in force, but for those who actually use Yahoo! Finance, this is a poor substitute.
I think your definition of “a step further” is a little bit of an overstretch. It does miss stuffs that Yahoo offer such as Beta calculations (very important for day trader), there’s also no information about its option’s price.
The advantages Google have over Yahoo would definitely be the flashy charts but most trader will just go with bigcharts on marketwatch instead.
All and all, I do think Yahoo Finance currently is still better than Google Finance. Give it sometime and we will see the outcome.
The killer feature of Yahoo! Finance that Google’s site appears to lack is the ability to manage multiple portfolios. This allows investors to create multiple “what-if” scenarios
I’m not sure what’s so killer about that … the ability to create different “users” and have them buy different stocks? That’s like a day’s worth of work.
I like the timeline aspect of the google DOW page — pretty handy way to see if certain news changed the markets. This timeline feature can be exported to different fields, like medicine.
Disappointing… I don’t see any reason to switch from Yahoo Finance. Although the charts are cool, they don’t really provide insight that I need to see on a daily basis.
What’s worse is the number of spam links displayed. When looking up symbol ATML, the first 2 blog links are spam:
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=atml
it cannot do comparsion chart. that’s a useful feature to me. still i really like its interactive charting capability.
i just wrote a greasemonkey script to add a link to Google Finance from Yahoo Finance if you are using Firefox. (it can be located at http://optimize-it.blogspot.com)
Disappointing review. You focused more on the technologies used than the actual content/features provided by google. Based on the latter, it’s definitely not worth switching to google. Bad timing on their part. They should have waited longer and added some more unique features before launching.
Not great, but will have legs– remember that tens of thousands of people lookup stocks by going to google’s search box and typing in the ticker symbol. They were previously sending people to yahoo/fool/mwatch and generating millions of monthly pageviews (est.) for those sites.
Now, they will capture those casual users who just want the info. GOog work.
I really like Google Finance. Yahoo was much too cluttered for my liking. This is simpler, cleaner and actually makes me stay on the page. The additional features will come in time and they are easy enough to find via google search anyway.
Alright, lets call a spade a spade.
Google Finance V1.0 is crap.
All you fools gushing over this crap need to look at the better sites out there. The leading web based provider of stock charts is BigCharts.com. BigCharts has deep databases and generates beautiful graphs for many sites all over the web. Yahoo Finance is the default financial portal on the internet. Yahoo has invested nearly 10 years building features.
Google’s misfires with Video and Finance are beginning to demonstrate the high state of arrogance within the company.
Who approved these sites for launch?
Did they do even a simple comparison against Yahoo/Marketwatch/BigCharts/StockCharts?
I think not.
Did the conversation go like this:
Google Engineer: Like, we’ve built a really awesome flash based sight. It is sharp and clean.
Google Product Management: Dude, that is way awesome. It is clean and you can scroll the charts. By the way, did you try the organic goat cheese falafel today?
Engineer: Loved the falafel. Chased it down with spoon of sunflower seed oil. So yeah. Finance. We nailed it.
PM: Lets launch it dude.
They have not created any fresh private company content. They have gotten it from Hoovers. That’s also where Yahoo gets theirs from. Perhaps this will trigger the duplicate content filters
Google Finance is a disappointing mess. Try putting in the ticker symbol “SVI” - you should get Services Acquisition Corp. International. Instead, you get Strategic Vista International, which trades as SVI on the Toronto exchange. Putting in the company name doesn’t yield the company either.
Now, put in “PPS.” Google Finance is currently showing it’s price at $1.57, even though it closed over $45. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone made a poor decision based on their incredibly faulty data (wrong company? price off by a multiple of almost 30?!?) and tried to hold them legally responsible.
Hey, looks like some of you are looking for an investment tool. I am in Hong Kong and found a pretty cool beta for the casual investor - check it out:
http://redandgreenguide.com
It is focused only on the HK stock market at the moment but I think the process applies to any market.
What’s next? Google Health or GHealth…
Google Finance is fantastic
@Mr. Curious:
Perhaps you missed the “BETA” part, or simply don’t understand what it means. This isn’t a 1.0 release, and it’s not an official launch. It’s an early beta, and should be approached as such.
Perhaps instead of posting rants in the comment section of blogs, calling other people “fools” all the while making it apparent you may be their King, you should try giving some constructive feedback to Google so they can improve the product. After all, that’s exactly *why* they release these products early in their beta cycle.
Just look at all the changes that have happened to Gmail, thanks to beta user feedback…
alors nous somes des amazier de k_m et qui vous je dite que http://www.rasta2said.skyblog.com
Google Finance is a lot better than every other Finance Site. Most Broker pages or Bank pages are very slow and complicated to handle. Google is straight forward as always - all what you need in one small package! Very nice!
Google Finance is a lot better than every other Finance Site. Most Broker pages or Bank pages are very slow and complicated to handle. Google is straight forward as always - all what you need in one small package! Very nice!
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