March 21st, 2006
Google Fails to Innovate in the Finance Vertical
I’m with Om Malik — Google Finance underwhelms. The improvements over Yahoo Finance, like interactive graphs, are nice but not transformative. Which is disappointing, because it’s easy to imagine features that would be transformative — or at least a bigger step forward:
1. Company Memetracker
The company tearsheets have mainstream media stories over here and blog posts over there — this is light years behind memeorandum and its Web 2.0 cousins. Google Finance provides a “Related articles” link on mainstream media stories, but it’s hardly dynamic meme tracking, and is completely useless on a day like today when there’s lots of talk about a company.
If you check out the tearsheet on Google, it doesn’t contain any of the massive blog discussion of Google Finance (which of course is dominating tech.memeorandum) — this not surprising, given that the blog content is powered by Google’s crumby Blogsearch.
2. Bull/Bear Filter
The technology already exists to sort content by positive and negative tone. Wouldn’t it be great to take finance vertical search to a new level by being able to search for bullish and bearish coverage of a company?
With the same technology, Google (or anyone) could produce a bull/bear meter to track how positive or negative the discussion of a company is on a given day or over time.
3. Mutual Fund Holding Search
What if I want to find a mutual fund with large holdings in a company, e.g. Google. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to search mutual funds by key holdings?
I’m just making these up — I’m sure there are much better ideas out there.
Maybe Google has some truly whiz bang features in store. What’s disappointing about the Beta is that it doesn’t make any great strides in Google’s core value proposition: helping me find the information I need.
In a conversation with John Battelle, the product manager of Google Finance, Katie Jacobs Stanton, said:
“We’re up to par,” with the other services.
What a missed opportunity. Just being “up to par” doesn’t cut it anymore. In entering a vertical, Google’s ambition should be to blow away the other services.
Google Finance represents a failure of Google to innovate within a vertical, which leaves the door open for vertical players to get there first (and which should reduce the fear among verticals that Google is going to eat their lunch).
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As with any google announcement, the blogging world can’t stop talking about it. Google Finance is loaded eye candy but, as Om Malik notes, doesn’t change the game. Publishing 2.0 iseven harsher in their post saying google should have launched with more advanced tools. My own 2 cents on a tool: My online brokerage has one really handy tool which lets you enter “what if i invested on these date
[…] I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt, Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. […]
[…] I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic … … (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt, Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff. […]
[…] Thursday Mar 23, 2006 I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt, Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. Editor’s Note: Google Finance launched the other day with the normal amount of fanfare reserved for a Google product launch. However, not everyone is feeling the Google Finance vibe. What are your thoughts about Google’s newest web utility/news outlet? Do you share Jeremy’s feelings of sadness? Tell us what you think at Jeremy’s blog. Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff. […]
I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt,Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. You see, I started at Yahoo! back in 1999 as an engineer working on Yahoo! Finance. It was one of the sites I used most often back then, so it was a privilege to get my hands on
Google Finance debuts to mixed reviews Google.Portal.Finance Launches Google Finance: Nice charts, but users won’t switch quickly Early Reviews Are In For Google Finance Why Google Finance Makes Me SadGoogle Fails to Innovate in the Finance Vertical The most interesting thing to note from a journalist’s point of view is that they’re going to have real people police their message boards. In other words, editors — which puts a lie to the claim that algorithms can replace synapses
[IMG]comment | [IMG] | [IMG] Yahoo | I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt,Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff that’s been under mild pressure for a few years now. You see, I started at Yahoo! back in 1999 as an engineer working on
Why Google Finance Makes Me Sadtag mediscuss me(0)23 Mar 2006 I’ve had several folks ask me what I think of Google Finance. There’s already a fair amount of good commentary out there on the topic (Bambi, TBAiT, Charlene, Matt,Publishing 2.0, Blodget, and others), so I’m going to answer this in a different way. Warning: This is long and not terribly flattering stuff. You see, I started at Yahoo! back in 1999 as an engineer working on Yahoo! Finance. It was one of the sites I used most