Google finally has an answer to Yahoo and MSN’s financial sites in its new beta version of Google Finance. It takes advantage of Google’s long-reaching access to resources such as news and blogs, and offers unique features that users may find helpful and useful enough to steer them away from the sites they used to get their financial news and information from.
These features include a stock chart with plotted news events. When you look up a particular company, you will see a Flash chart with letters corresponding with news on the right side of the page plotted at certain points on the line. So, if the stock of a certain company changed drastically at 10 a.m. today, you can potentially see what the reason for the change was.
Users will also be able to adjust the time zoom on the stock charts without having to reload the page. If you want to view a 3-month zoom, the timeline above the chart will shift to a 3-month span, and the chart below will display this 3-month span in detail, including the news plots mentioned above. This is because of the Flash used to create the chart, but users whose browsers have difficulty with Flash have the option of using a more traditional chart.
Along with these features are news and blog sections that are related to the company that is being researched. The blog feature is the more noteworthy one, giving users the option of reading up on news, information, and opinions that do not come from more traditional news and media sources.
Google also says that it will be covering private companies on Google Finance. They will be able to do this by working with partners and using its own information that it garners from exploring the Web.
Google Finance also does away with the “symbol lookup” function that other finance sites have, allowing users to search for a company by typing in either its full company name or its ticker symbol.
The new service offered by the Mountain View giant will enable its users to save a portfolio of selected stocks, which is already a feature included in its personal home page service that was launched back in May of 2005.
Google will also use its Google Groups service to offer discussion groups that are geared towards specific companies. They will hire moderators to keep an eye out for posters who will try to push stocks up or down with exaggerated posts.
Another smooth feature is the management details for each company. Users can scroll their pointer over someone’s name and read a quick bio which includes his/her position in the company, length of service in their position, and their age. Links leading to a more detailed bio and compensation information offered by Reuters as well recent trading activity information offered by Yahoo Finance are also there for users to click on.
Google Finance will cover companies in North America for the time being, but Google plans on expanding its service to cover other countries in the near future.
Sources:
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/
article.php/3592876
http://finance.google.com/finance
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