Move over Yahoo Finance? Google Finance launched last week, albeit a Beta version. They say it’s different, ‘offering an easier way to search for stocks, mutual funds, public and private companies’. The add-ons include company news and info, some good-looking flash charts that allow interactivity in changing things like timelines, and front-page Ajax for that quick market-view switcheroo.
The first reaction has, as first reactions usually go with Google initiatives, been positive, with many initial users liking the clean, simple interface, the charts and so on. The Groups section, coming up soon, is what’s really interesting: stocks will be talked about here, their relative merits dissected, with paid moderators. This is, clearly, the first time that Google will be publishing content under its own flag, on its own site. As John Battelle says on his searchblog, “This marks a rolling shift at Google - the company is getting into publishing, whether or not it wants to admit it.” ‘Portal’ behaviour this is, and one wonders if the old ‘eyeballs’ game will crop up again.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li was clear that “most mainstream financial site users will stick with their current sources for now, primarily because it's simply a pain to have to re-enter your detailed portfolio information again.” And Google Finance is still quite a far cry from being as useful to the online stock tracker as Yahoo; more features/analytics/research will no doubt be added soon. As a service, however, Google will now be more potent for sure.
The new content-focus is what we take away most from here – and with the kind of search expertise on tap at Google, specific info-sites on just about anything could be just another launch away.
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