Google launches financial Web site

IDG News Service - Google Inc. today launched a financial news and information Web site today called Google Finance that will directly compete with well-established ones such as Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Finance and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Money.

Development of such a Web site has been a top request from Google users, said Katie Jacobs Stanton, a Google senior product manager.

Google hopes to differentiate its site with better search functionality and a higher level of interactivity in its financial charts, she said.

The launch of the site raises questions anew about whether Google is morphing into a Web portal, a label the company has resisted even though it offers content and services that put it in competition with Yahoo.com and MSN.com.

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel has openly mocked Google's ambitions to be a reluctant provider of Web portal content and services, saying that in that broader market, it lacks the clout and dominance it clearly enjoys in the search engine market.

Semel will probably notice one effect from Google Finance: fewer referrals to his company's financial site. Until now, when a user has entered a stock ticker symbol, Google has chosen Yahoo Finance as its default primary link in the stock summary box Google delivers at the top of search results, Jacobs Stanton said. As of today, Google Finance will become the default. However, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money and other prominent sites of that nature will continue to be featured in Google search results, she said.

Google Finance will include information from public sources, as well as data that Google has licensed from content providers like Reuters PLC and Morningstar Inc. It will include links to news articles, graphs, company profiles, financial tables, blog postings, discussion groups and links to other Web sites. Graphs charting historical stock-price fluctuations will include links to relevant events affecting a stock's value.

Google has no current plans to display ads on Google Finance, the company said. All information on the site will be available free of charge, a Google spokeswoman said.

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.