Google's vertical move

Thumbs down for Google Finance? That's what some hedge fund managers (who are likely short Google, or likely still upset about missing the boat) said to me after they reviewed the new service this morning. That said, I have to agree to some extent. Why? Just because it's a service from Google, and I expect a lot more. Google's Finance site - which just launched Tuesday -- is not that impressive, partly because it looks so much like other finance sites, like Yahoo Finance, which launched years ago. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, actually, given that Katie Stanton, a former Yahoo Finance employee, is running Google's new vertical.

Besides an interactive chart that shows when stories published (to give investors a sense of what moved the stock), there is nothing innovative or spectacular about the service. OK. I really do like the interactive charts - those are very useful! - and, I like the pop-up window with information about the executive team.  I also like the prominent placement of the blogs. But where's the related video? Where are the open APIs, so smart geeks can mash-up stuff Google hasn't thought of?  I thought Google believes in "The Wisdom of Crowds."

To be sure, Google doesn't need  bells and whistles to be good. It just needs to be relevant.  And, these days, blogs are relevant.

Type in "Google" on Google News, and you get 37,000 results. Type in "Google" on Google Finance, and go to the blog posts section, and you'll see that there are 5.9 million results.  Want to know who's blogging about Google Finance? Besides yours truly, there's Bill Bishop -- a dear friend and former colleague at MarketWatch, and Henry Blodget, former Internet analyst.

Why is Google doing such a move? For starters, it's likely a number of people went to Google News and typed in "goog" or "aapl" - or other stock quotes, or names of publicly-held companies to get the latest news from 4,500 sources.  I know I did. Moreover, traffic to finance sites has grown faster than traffic to Internet sites overa. Traffic to financial news and information sites grew 10% in February, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. That compares to 3% traffic growth to overall Internet sites. Advertisers also love finance sites. In 2005, 35% of the $418 million in ad dollars managed by Aquantive's Avenue A/Razorfish went into verticals vs. 31% that went into search. Advertisers also more than doubled their ad dollars going into finance verticals, despite the 20% increase in ad prices, according to the Internet advertising company.

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

Read MarketWatch story

Comments

[Eric Frenchman]

Bambi,

Google Finance is really just a baby step. For the average investor, it lacks research and analytics that are needed to make good investment decisions. However, I love the way it integrates all available news and blogs making it superior to finance sites that only display news from sites that have feed deals in place. See more of my review at www.ericfrenchman.com

[John]

The Google portfolio feature is at a kindergarten level. Not even in the same universe as Yahoo. Classic Google half-baked release with one cool attention grabber (nice charts) but not finished elsewhere.

[Eric]

Organize the worlds information... I think it is true to form, they had to start somewhere. I just can't imagine how google finance can drive revenue that is otherwise not being monetized. Incremental benefit to financials is weak. Potential benefit to users is quite high...

[Marvin]

Google needs streaming live quotes. They could monetise that. I pay for it at Yahoo.

[Internet Twokfour]

Agree Google's is an early days beta now. It may be time for a real feature by feature review of finance sites: I can't find anything close to MSN MoneyCentral for comprehensiveness and tools available. Why is it the only site supporting email alerts for foreign indexes? Why is is it so hard to get to SEC filings and insider data on the others? On and on.

[Nilevad]

Google Finance may not be the wonky finance tool desired by many financial savants, but it does make revolutionary strides in how complex financial data is presented and navigated.

Google's use of AJAX technology simplifies multi-step processes such as stock chart navigation and news event correlation. These features, while seemingly trivial, are great time savers that greatly contribute to a user's understanding of a company. I imagine we will see similar innovations come from Y and M in a few quarters.

So to Google Finance's naysayers... wait until the Beta tag is shed from the screen. Perhaps by then, the product will provide more depth and coverage in its financial data detail and tool set.

[nish]

I prefer to find IPO reports, Free earnings call summaries, and earnings calendars, and interview of some of the top mutual fund managers and consolidation of all economic releases from government at www.123jump.com

[druce]

what Google coulda/shoulda done

1) developed real stock charts, or bought Stockcharts.com

2) let you customize the page, build your own tear sheet/briefing book
on companies you follow, or the market

3) integrated google desktop, so you could see popups of news relevant
to your portfolio from the Google News sources of choice, weblogs etc.

4) open API, so people can build ratios/calculators/add-ons/mashups

so who are the target users, if not 'financial savants'...moms from Peoria? whenever you have to explain that it's great because of the fantastic underlying technology, it means that technology ain't delivering anything of value to the user.

[Jon G.]

Here's a thought: the service just started today and is in a beta stage.

Should we expect it to have features above and beyond what Yahoo has been offering for years? No.

Should we ever expect it to be overly complicated, and laden with features that most financial paisans are not expected to use? No, because that would go against the Google mantra of beauty through organizational simplicity by design.

I agree with Nilevad. Let it blossom beyond the beta tag before saying it's terrible.

[Peter]

Bambi is a stunning beauty. I forgot what I was about to post.hmm. oh yes. Google takes everything one step at a time. Which is what successful entrepreneurs do. Many people fail to realize how dynamic the web is. Google can keep trying till they get the best formula. I now spend $3 on google ads to every $1 on yahoo ads. My adverting used to be split 50 - 50. ciao for now:-)

[Larry Mussman]

Google is powered by an ultra successful management team who understandably zag and dip once in a while their critics continue to forecast last months mistakes. How about some much earned praise for a refreshing forward looking company that has launched a mega search engine which largely assists so many individuals every second of every day. Lets consider the good 99 percent.
What say?

[Dewey]

Whoa, Whao, Whoa
Everyone expects every release from google to be this ultimate experience. Let's not forget how Google search got started. It was a very simple service with basic keyword searching. Now there are many different ways to search content on the web and Google is the best search site online. I think the beta release of Google Finance is genius - release a simplistic version of something we plan to spruce up and let the public tell us what they want us to add. How about that? Let the public tell us what they want and then we will add it instead of spending a gajillion dollars on something that no one will use and will add no material value to the site. We can't expect them to leave it as is; they never do. Let's remember how this got started, Google listened to customers when the customers said they wanted a place to find financial data, and some of you think that they will just stop upgrading and innovating because the beta version is out? Give me a break. Just give it time and Google Finance will blow Yahoo Finance out of the water just like they did to their search revenues. It's just that their style isn't the traditional "shoot first, ask questions later" style that we are all used to seeing online.

Big Daddy

[Jeremy]

One powerful but not so obvious feature that most people haven't discovered is that in addition to stock ticker and company name, one can also type in a product name, or just about any topic (i.e. avian flu or SARS), and Google Finance will return with a list of relevant companies that are somehow related to this topic. That's pretty revolutionary.
Google Finance probably has a lot more hidden treasures beneath its surface, and users just have to stretch their imagination a bit more to take full advantage of it.

[Dave]

Junk, plain and simple. If you are going to create competition in this area you need to do something that is different and not more of the same.

Whoever called this childish was giving it too much credit. With the access to money that Google has you would have expected something better than a copy of what others have done. It looks like they threw it together over a weekend.

[Mura]

Hello ! This is very [url=http://www.google.com/bb497]good[/url] site !!

[Eric Walker]

Hi,

My name is Eric Walker and I am a graduate student pursuing a Masters of Information Management (MIM) degree in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. In fulfillment of my degree requirements, I am a participating member of a student research team for my competitive intelligence class which is studying and analyzing Microsoft/MSN joint ventures in the Chinese marketplace.

I came across your contact information on the internet during my preliminary research and felt that with your expertise and background, you could provide me with some valuable information to assist me with my project. Would you mind answering a few questions? They are listed them below.

If you prefer to speak over the phone, please let me know when it would be convenient for me to call you and how I could reach you.

Thanks in advance and looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Eric Walker

• What is the purpose of the joint venture? / Why is the joint venture being established?

• What type of joint venture was it? (For example contractual, corporate or partnership)

• What is Google’s goal in regard to the join venture?

• What are Google’s main concerns given its goal?

• Were there any capital distribution?

• What are both entities bringing to the joint venture?

• Is this joint venture going to hurt Google?

• How will the U.S. and Chinese governments participate in this venture?

• Is Google's investment at risk of expropriation?

• What intellectual property rights are in play?

• What kinds of limitations does Google accept on its power to compete with the joint venture?

• Was there any licensing issue involved?

• How much did Google spent in this deal?

[aero]

Good info.
I have some nice stores and want to share it address.
http://www.furniture.any.pl/
http://www.broyhill-furniture.fe.pl/
http://www.broyhill-furniture-online.fe.pl/
http://www.eurorail.any.pl/

[LookingConfident]

Hi Bambi .....

When discussing Verticals, search and Google's vertical move, we shouldn't miss what Looksmart is up to, of late ..... Follow this line of thought ....

Early this morning, in Australia I post the following reply to another, who asked as to WHY some shareholders thought, September could very well be, a pretty BIG month for Looksmart.

I WROTE:

"For two quarters now, the CEO of Looksmart, Dave Hills has made a brief mention of a partnership with Fox TV Sites. (Owned by Newscorp, a Major publisher/Media Co). The expectancy of a few 'fellow diehard' shareholders who follow the Co pretty closely, is that this association may very well be centered around the new, “MyNetwork TV” launch, on September 5th".

http://www.mynetworktv.com/

Then, an hour later, the instigator of a shareholder group reported finding, what was "music to the ears" of fellow shareholders: (Mike posted)

"New York and Los Angeles affiliates of Fox TV has migrated to a new format that includes LOOK/LOK contextual ads on the right column of the search results pages".

http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/SearchResult?siteId=1003&pageId=1.1&searchLocation=web&qt=baseball&submit.x=19&submit.y=6&submit=Go

This was enormous news, and will most certainly boost the very much "oversold" share price value of LOOK, when the market is advised of and fully 'consumes' this latest move, that appears to be developing. IMHO.

A thread on discussion of this latest discovery (and links to it), are as follows:

http://www.ozestock.com.au/board_postview.asp?a=PVS&postID=447197&boardID=2117&sym=LOK

http://www.ozestock.com.au/board_postview.asp?a=PVS&boardID=2117&sym=LOK&postID=447199

http://www.ozestock.com.au/board_postview.asp?a=PVS&boardID=2117&sym=LOK&postID=447229

http://www.ozestock.com.au/board_postview.asp?a=PVS&boardID=2117&sym=LOK&postID=447230

http://www.ozestock.com.au/board_postview.asp?a=PVS&boardID=2117&sym=LOK&postID=447244

And in another reply to a "knocker" on a stock board in OZ, I posted:

Why don't you have a look at those "sensational" ADS, as are shown?

Take this one as an example, for starters!!! (THIS, is "new age", WEB 2.0 Advertising methodology & certainly, Traffic "driving" stuff, IMHO)

Baseball
You're source for "Baseball" Related Information and resources.
www.forefrontonline.com

A click on the above "baseball" link, takes you to a "cashed" page of 'other' links,that then helps to 'drive' users to partner sites!! How brilliant!! Check this:

http://search.looksmart.com/p/page?sb=foxπ=ftv&qt=baseball&wg=fox#

In "clicking" on the following from within the link above, we are then taken to another partner site, being owned by The New York Times Co ....

Baseball - Boston.com
... were suspended by Major League Baseball on Thursday. (9:25 p.m.Baseball - Boston.com Red Sox Patriots ...
www.boston.com

Well, I'll be!! ....Unbelievably "clever", Looksmart !! (I thought?)

Have you any idea of the scale potential, of all this? (I posed to him?)

Good luck to holders ...(was my message).. Hold on tight, is my best advice to shareholders!!

Cheers !! :)
________________________

Surely, some "food for thought" ??

Thanks. LookingConfident