Slashdot Mirror
Google Finance Beta Released
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.
"
"looks suspiciously like something quickly hacked together."
Really? Check out their MSFT page - it really is a lot better organised than Yahoo's. Once they support Singaporean stocks (they already have lots of information), I'm gonna be all over these guys.
Good job, Google!
Hey, the storied search engine has a plain starting screen too. Where this is cool is when you get into the detail page for individual stocks. Check out the price graph, which is much richer than what Yahoo has -- you can hover for the closing price on specific days, click and drag to move around in the history, and zoom however you like.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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
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.
I would hardly call it 'hacked together', the graphing utility alone constitutes real UI thought.
"seems to be too plain and looks suspiciously like something quickly hacked together"
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
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
That's probably because Google thinks its own index knows more about companies than folks like Hoovers do. Most search results for "wipro vivek paul" suggest that Paul is still with the company.
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.
For more information, click here.
Add CM to my portfolio....
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
Enter a stock and see the page that comes up. Despite the fact it uses Flash it is actually nicely implemented. Drag the viewing range of the stock around and you will see the associated news entries change to show what happened in those periods - nice!
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The site finance.google.com seems to be too plain and looks suspiciously like something quickly hacked together.
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.
It's not a bad way of doing things.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
uh, no it's not.
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.