Google Finance Beta Released 206
t3rmin4t0r writes "Forbes.com is reporting that google has rolled out a finance site. The site finance.google.com seems to be too plain and looks suspiciously like something quickly hacked together. The Forbes article mentions that "Google had previously provided financial information through a framed page featuring information from Yahoo! Finance, Fool.com, MSN Money Central and ClearStation " and that the information is collected from various sources rather than a direct feed from the stock exchanges, making it probably less useful for buy & sell decisions.
"
Woo hoo! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
1. the data is sparse. no canadian stocks. no options. no bonds. no futures. StockCharts.com has all that, it's free, and the charting is better because:
2. no technical analysis
and Yahoo is still way better than Google finance... hopefully Google will improve, but right now, there are litterly hundreds of free, better, and more comprehensive financial websites out there.
Besides, the fact that they don't get their data directly from the exchanges is _completely_ bogus for anything serious. You can't use Google Finance for any real trading decisions.
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:2)
The interface is pretty slick, but like you said, it could use a whole lot more features that are offered elsewhere.
Re: Yes, they get their data direct (Score:2)
Further, they say that they are getting the data direct in their blog [blogspot.com].
Also, look again at the blog: Canadian Venture Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange.
APIs? (Score:2)
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:3, Interesting)
He/she may indeed like to check their source. I believe only Google News cannot display ads (due to legal threats), probably including Google's personalised home page as it has Google News contents.
Re:Woo hoo! (Score:3, Informative)
The indexes come up if entered without the upcaret, i.e.: ^IXIC is shown at IXIC [google.com]
Google is in Everything (Score:2)
Re:Google is in Everything (Score:2)
Think of it in terms of the theory that if you go around bars asking for sex, you'll eventually get some.
Instead of Google being an unattractive slob, though, they're handsome and all the girls want to have sex with them. In other words, there are lots of people who want to use all the Google servic
Re:Google is in Everything (Score:2)
Only if you're good looking. If you're ugly, you'll get charged with sexual harassment. If only I had a link to that SNL skit
Re:Google is in Everything (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google is in Everything (Score:2)
Whew! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whew! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whew! (Score:2)
Re:Whew! (Score:2, Informative)
I like! (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Check out their MSFT [google.com] page - it really is a lot better organised than Yahoo's [yahoo.com]. Once they support Singaporean stocks (they already have lots of information), I'm gonna be all over these guys.
Good job, Google!
Re:I like! (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to know their daily historical prices [yahoo.com] going back to 1986? How about getting the percent of their float currently shorted [yahoo.com] as a gauge of bearishness on the stock? Or track insider trading [yahoo.com] as an indicator of management's confidence in their own company? Check the options chain [yahoo.com] for ways to hedge your positions or as a way of leveraging an investment in the stock? Yahoo provides all this and more.
At present Google Finance just gives you the thousand-mile overview and links you to other sites for anything more detailed. While this might improve in the future, at the moment the article summary's judgement on their scope is valid.
Where I do see an opportunity for Google Finance to one-up Yahoo is in their corporate news section. Yahoo mainly gets corporate news related to a company from news wires like Reuters or PR Newswire. As a result, a lot of smaller companies that analysts don't follow as closely have very few news stories associated with them. Of course, this same universe of small companies is where a diligent personal investor can uncover lots of value stocks overlooked by Wall Street. With their excellent Google News technology, this would be a great spot for Google to use their expertise at pulling in the latest news stories off all corners of the news world for all stocks, not just the big ones that are closely watched by the Street. That would certainly give me a reason to use their service to keep tabs on stocks I'm interested in following.
Re:I like! (Score:3, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cq?d=e&s=ge%2Ctsn%2CMO
Re:I like! (Score:2)
Re:I like! (Score:2)
its got a cool sliding graph. Look!!!! Wheeeeeeee.
Musta been some cool ajax behind that!
Re:I like! (Score:2)
While you've obviously spent the time to point out to everyone four things you like about Yahoo! Finance -- what did you *like* about Google's finance page?
I took one look at it and immediately thought that relating TIMES of news releases to the stock's price history was awesome!
If Google Maps or Gmail are any indication, Yahoo! Finance is in for a shake-up.
How
Re:I like! (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the context search (Score:2)
You get a list of 60 nanotechnology related companies. I'm assuming it searches by profile or industry. With a more advanced search language, you could pull up very selective lists of stocks. The hard part to trading is finding a stock in the sector that you like and then comparing it with a few competitors. Google could add some tags so you could do:
nanotechnology industry:medical peratio:+10.1 eps:>.01
and get a list of stocks
Plain? Don't talk nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Plain? Don't talk nonsense (Score:2)
But is it ugly [slashdot.org]?
Re:Depends on what you want ... (Score:2)
The home page doesn't seem to be as customizable as yahoo yet, but I think it is a good first effort, it certainly looks better than yahoo once you start digging into the details.
Re:Depends on what you want ... (Score:2)
Re:Depends on what you want ... (Score:2)
You only need an invitation to create a gmail account if you do not have a cellphone. Sign up via SMS here [google.com].
Re:Depends on what you want ... (Score:2)
Very limited. (Score:1, Informative)
Besides a somewhat nifty chart -- which most pro sites have already gone far beyond -- this is not very noteworthy except that all things Google are news, right? I'd use Yahoo Finance to get information on Google's stock before I used Google Finance.
Re:Very limited. (Score:2)
No usless real time stock ticker (are you a speculator or investor?), links to more technical charting, links to options listings...
It's a brand new beta. Give it time for more advanced portfolio (i hope!) additions.
Re:Very limited. (Score:2, Informative)
Google Finance stock delays [google.com]
Yahoo Finance stock delays [yahoo.com]
MSN Money stock delays [msn.com]
Besides that, Google News left beta in January... doesn't seem they've stopped developing that, at the very least.
Re:Very limited. (Score:2)
No OTC:BB (Score:2)
Re:Very limited. (Score:2, Interesting)
unless, of course, you consider the real time quotes.
search for a ticker symbol. right above the chart, you'll see a line that starts "Real-Time ECN:" that is a real-time quote.
Re:Very limited. (Score:2)
Re:Very limited. (Score:2)
I just noticed (Score:5, Informative)
I was just about to post a story about this. I went to pull up the info on a quote from my Google news page and saw the new format.
The main page may look plain, but the detail on a stock is beautiful:
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ig&q=AAPL [google.com]
The stock ticker is draggable, like Google Maps, and shows a marker for each news item (listed on the side). Also, as you scroll the ticker (by dragging it), the news items change to show items relevant to the timeframe displayed.
I'd say well done Google.
Re:I just noticed (Score:2)
Re:I just noticed (Score:2)
Re:I just noticed (Score:2)
Re:I just noticed (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite like Google Maps; this stock chart is produced with Flash 8, not AJAX/DHTML/JS/whatever you want to call it.
Not a problem for me, or (I expect) for its target audience. Still, I think this is the first time Google has built something using Flash instead of AJAX, so it's notable just for that.
Re:I just noticed (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't Google Video use flash?
Re:I just noticed (Score:2)
Uhhh.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe if the submitter took a few steps beyond that first page, he'd see how mind-crushingly awesome this service is. I mean.. they made a crawler to actually get pictures of company officers?
Not to mention that their graphing software is really, really slick. Head and shoulders above Yahoo.
Hacked Together? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing to see here (Score:4, Informative)
I use the Yahoo Finance page to track my portfolio. It's redundant with my actual brokerage page, but the brokerage is much more paranoid about automatically logging me out, so a simple check is often a pain. Fortunately, for me keeping the two in synch is easy because I trade only a few times a year.
Google's got a loooooong way to go before I abandon that. I have faith that they can, but for the moment I wouldn't call this Beta. Usually when Google calls something "Beta" it at least shows one cool thing. This is just a "me, too" page.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? I clicked on the link to AAPL [google.com] and saw not just stock info and news--linked to dates on the chart, no less--but Company Facts, Company Summary, Company Financials, Management, Related Companies, and links to Blog Posts (courtesy of Google Blog Search, natch) and discussions hosted by Google. That's almost twice as much information as I got from Yahoo's default page [yahoo.com].
Chart (Score:2)
Re:Chart (Score:2)
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
I've got HK/CN,UK,NZ & AU stocks and they don't have feeds of exchange announcements, they don't have the P/E, you get different news items depending on if you go to finance.yahoo.com or au.finance.yahoo.com or uk.finance.yahoo.com, and often the news about an AU country will appear in the uk. and not the au. site.
Then they keep getting confused several times a week over whether a lo
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
I'd really kinda like to diversify my portfolio out of dollar-valued stocks because, well, as you might have noticed the economy of this country is doomed. No matter what the market seems to think today. The dollar is in a bubble of its own, and when that bubble burts... hoo, boy, is THAT gonna
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
Can't you just open an account with a broker that deals in foreign markets? Is that why so many companies offer ADRs?
In the UK just about every broker can trade stocks on the major US and EU markets. They'll usually charge you a fraction more brokerage than UK & IE stock though.
Finding one to deal in your favourite asian, eastern european and middle eastern exchanges can take a little more shopping around. And with natwest who i went with in the end, they'll charg
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:2)
In the end I just went with a European stock mutual fund, which makes sense for (a) diversity and (b) the fact that I don't actually know which foreign companies to invest in. Being a tech nerd in America I know (or at least think I know) which American companies to buy.
Has a long way to go to catch Yahoo! (Score:2)
- The scrollable graphical price history is pretty neat. You can also easily expand the time horizon. There isn't really a lot you can do with it, but I think it's a fun little toy.
- Important links to each company are included: news, employment opportunities, investor relations, etc. It's nice to have all of those links in one place.
Bad:
- If you're looking for a lot of real information about a company's finances, you'll still have to go elsewhere. A few financial ratios are reported on each
Some nice features (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, in the same way google.com looks "quickly hacked together"
Just for fun I pulled up my 401k investments. The time line was nice, and the information was good. But I figured I'd check out the 401k's investment since I started investing in it. I clicked the 3yr link at the top of the chart and it made a pretty cool re-size effect, and the top bar changed too. Looks like you can click and drag either side of the total time line bar to change the zoom to any time period for the fund.
Pretty neat, and definitely not 'quickly hacked together'
-Rick
Zooming (Score:2)
The fact that it does a cool zoom effect when you click somewhere does not excuse the absence of 'insider transactions' link on the stock page. And neither does it justify the presence of company address, summary and management list. Leave alone some useless blog links. The view is overcrowded with information that is not needed on a day-to-day basis. And it rather feels more like a 'miscellaneous inf
Re:Zooming (Score:2)
Other then the huge ass banner that takes up most of my browser window. Once you get to the actual fund view it is pretty slick.
-Rick
Re:Zooming (Score:2)
Re:Some nice features (Score:2)
In all honestly, what got me started using google back in the day was not the quality of search results over yahoo (it helped, for a little while though), it was the fact that even on dial-up it loaded almost instantly.
same as Google (Score:2)
They just separated a separate "finance" section by channeling queries and news to it. Maybe this and google wallet might work together and something big happens.
too plain (Score:2)
Not replacing Yahoo Finance yet... (Score:5, Informative)
hmm.. "Could not find the requested symbol"
Right, and no symbol search for the noobs.. that's going to be convenient. Oh well, try Adding CM.TO instead.
"We will support international symbols soon"
Right. Then maybe I'll give it a try "soon". Back to yahoo for me. (Add this to the other complaints people are having)
-Moof
Re:Not replacing Yahoo Finance yet... (Score:2)
Re:Not replacing Yahoo Finance yet... (Score:2)
Re:Not replacing Yahoo Finance yet... (Score:2)
Whats sad is that you can't have non-US stocks in your portfolio. Have no idea why, beta or non-beta.
Bah! No message boards ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bah! No message boards ... (Score:2)
HTH
plain and hacked together? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you want to go ahead and quickly hack up a page like this:
http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=16701613 [google.com]
?
Google thrives on the simple and powerful interfaces they create. It's half of what got them where they are today.
Real time quotes (Score:2)
Re:Real time quotes (Score:2)
How about tomorrow?
Re:Real time quotes (Score:2)
Except it wasn't delayed and it still isn't delayed. For example, check out the timestamp on this quote for AMZN compared to this post - "Real-Time ECN: 35.92 -0.31 (-0.86%) Mar 21, 3:01PM ET". It states quite clearly it is a realtime quote. Other symbols like IBM and even more obscure ones also show realtime quotes.
Plain? Are you kidding? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously you didn't get past the first page which is thankfully as close to plain as it can be. Here's one very good argument for having a very plain front page: It loads fast. Then you get where you really want to be faster.
Even on the main page there's some technically cool stuff. Hover over the market indexes and the graph changes to the one you're hovering over. They've got that in a few places. Go to the main page for a ticker and hover over individuals listed in Management and it gives you more info. In fact, if you do it on the GOOG ticker, it even shows pictures in the pop-up.
Trying hovering over the graph and it gives you data specific to the day or time that you're hovering over in the upper right. You can scroll the graphs to look back in history instead of having to change the time periods. You can select a fixed time period like Yahoo, or you can drag the start and end of the time period for the graph. This is some cool stuff.
Now, when you call it "plain", what are you comparing it to? Yahoo? Because Yahoo isn't anywhere near this tricked-out. As for the data, it doesn't appear to be any more out of date than Yahoo's data. It has the real time ECN just like Yahoo and the rest of the market data is probably 15-20 minutes delayed just like every other free financial site on the web.
Personally, my first impression is that it's exceptionally well designed. It's a great first cut and barring any major disasters, I suspect I'll switch over to it from Yahoo Finance.
What's next? (Score:2)
Long term view (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but the nature of the data collected and the way in which it is presented (the clear connection between event and price change and other things) makes it quite useful for planning investment strategy for a given company.
As with any such site, more research would have to be done for a given long term investment, but this does make a great starting place for that research. That is the great benefit to being the aggregator rather than the source. They pull together a lot of data from some other great sources and put it together in a way that makes the whole better, in some ways, than the sum of the parts. (C.f., Google News for another example)
At risk of sounding like a GOOG fanboy, they've batted another home run. We get a solid resource for long term investment, and they get access to our portfolios. Everyone wins (excepting the privacy concerns that are a legitimate tangent to nearly every google story).
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
not like their G drive? (Score:2)
Is it me, or the tables have turned...? (Score:2)
PS: Yes, i do work for Yahoo, but not related to this product, so my opinions are just that, my opinions.
Actually, a pretty neat community awareness thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignore the stupid sliders, and maybe yahoo already did all this but...
- Flags on signifigant news and where it fell on the stock's timeline, COOL
- Blog posts about the company, ties into the current buzz, COOL
- Hooks into google groups to see discussions going on about said company, COOL
Simply a great way to see where a company is both financially, and in the net community's eyes. Simple, but neat.
Oh, and check out Viacom: http://www.google.com/finance?cid=703770 [google.com]
The blog posts about tom cruise and south park? see, that is damn cool.
-mix
Once again, another very US-centric service (Score:2)
I tried to import my portfolio from Yahoo! finance - "We will support international symbols shortly"
Well, considering that I have been waiting for my Google Homepage to support them for about 8 months now, I wonder how long "shortly" will be.
Simmilar problems exist trying to add weather on the Google homepage, even if you know the international airport code for the area, it will get you nowhere. Works fine on
Misleading Service (Score:2)
fourth headline.... (Score:2)
Looks good, charts lacking... (Score:3, Insightful)
A mind is a terrible thing to waste (Score:2)
It's time to put down the pipe.
Re:In Other Words... (Score:2)
correction. (Score:2)
Re:In Other Words... (Score:2)
Re:In Other Words... (Score:2)
Sorry man, their motto is 'Do no gEvil.'
Re:First Error??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google's search engine falls short in other ways, too. They think my employer is still at the same office it was at three years ago, for example, because all the copycat linkfarm sites they index say so.
Take a look at stock page (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Take a look at stock page (Score:2)
Re:Take a look at stock page (Score:2)
If you don't have Flash, Google Finance will automatically degrade itself to using static images. I noticed it myself after using Google Finance on my desktop, and then showing someone it on a server machine (without Flash).
Re:Quick. Clean. (Score:2)
Yahoo learned nothing (Score:2)
I can't visit Yahoo finance anymore. The ads give me seisures.
This is exactly how Google killed them years ago.
Re:Yahoo learned nothing (Score:2)
Here's a test. (Score:2)
What do you want it to do that it doesn't already do?
Re:Quick. Clean. (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing Google learned from search is that people prefer simple. Provided an app does something useful, it's better in my view for it to start lacking some features than for it to drag useless, distracting, and poorly thought out features along for the rest of its natural lifespan. Let the users clamor for what they want, and cherry pick the low hanging fruit, repeating ad infinitum.
Re:Quick. Clean. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:how about google fiance? (Score:2)