Google Finance unrolled a healthy offering of new features today, aimed at positioning the tool as a stronger competitor to the more widely visited Yahoo! Finance website, which offers a wide range of financial resources and services to its users.
Google Finance, however, has been one of the company's less impressive ventures, and is often left out of the conversation altogether.
There aren't a lot of categories in which Yahoo! can boast complete and utter dominance over Google, but when it comes to Finance, it's clear that blogger writing for Ant & Sons documents the gap:
"Google Finance, however, has yet to pose a real threat to Yahoo Finance, the so-called behemoth of the online financial sites, as it currently offers a wealth of financial resources that Google still lacks, and an untouched following of thirty million unique visitors."
Search Engine Journal article with this to say as well:
"It [Google Finance] has failed to crack the top twenty financial destinations, as calculated by both Comscore and Nielsen Net Ratings. Its contribution to the overall Google traffic is minuscule, as data from HitWise reveals. Interestingly the shuttering Google Answers and Google Finance are still in the same ballpark, which makes us feel that the next upgrade is critical."
Today is the critical mass of which Om speaks. Google substantially overhauled its Finance site, adding a cornucopia of new features and aesthetic changes that the company hopes will give it a measure of legitimacy in the arena of financial information, metrics, and analysis.
Here are the Google rolled out today:
New Home Page - We're always trying to improve access to financial information, and so we've updated the reaction is pretty telling:
The new layout much cleaner and presentable as the page is divided into three columns. Recent quotes, stored using browser cookies, has been moved from the top right corner to the lower left corner. General news and corporate news of the recent quotes are featured in the center column. Most links on the page will bring you to a different page, except the top movers on the lower right.
However, the individual stock pages have not changed. :|
Overall looks pretty, but I have a few suggestions:
• Dynamically refresh each section using individual settings (they do change now, which is really cool)
• Display summary or beginning of news articles when mouseover links
• Background colour-code recent quotes with their related news
• Include stock historical prices and options
It's a synopsis with which I am inclined to agree. Aesthetically, the improvements are a slam-dunk. Three quarters of the battle, when it comes to retaining user interest, is presenting a crisp, sleek looking product that is easy on the eyes. I believe Google has accomplished this with the new site layout.
Functionality is improved, but still lacks some important detail. The blogger analysis above hit on a great point in that the pages for individual stocks haven't received any attention whatsoever. Perhaps that plan is in the works, but for now it creates an odd sense of dysfunction when transitioning from the new look layout to the old look stock pages.
The real question-du-jour, however, is whether or not the site can now compete with Yahoo! Finance. My gut answer isn't a flat out "no way"- but falls more along the lines of not yet.
The latest round of upgrades is a step in the right direction, to be sure. With continued focus on providing the utmost of detail to the user, Google could eventually give Yahoo! a run for its money (pardon the pun) when it comes to financial services.
But at least for now, 
murdok. Visit murdok for the
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