Today, amid gobs of blogfare, Google launched Google Finance. The webdits are reporting on it in waves. (Yes, I know this includes me).
As time goes on, I see item after item come out of Google and do some neat things. The neat thing in Google finance is an interactive map for past stock performance (almost).
I'm skipping the home page in this review as it provides little value other than as a search bar.
The Stock Page
Here we see some great innovation from Google. The interactive map shows news events about Electronic Arts over time. This is good from a quick glance perspective, you can easily line up what's happened in the past that may have influenced EA. You can also grab the interactive chart and pull it right or left and see the rest of the timeline at any scale. That's pretty neat.
The timeline above lets you dynamically set the viewing are in the window, the zoom level lets you set the units by which time is measured. Excellent stuff.
But what would be a killer app here? My killer app would certainly include insight into dividend payments, indications of deviation from the market, the ability to chart against peer stocks, and the ability to chart against the stock price fluctuations within the industry to name a few. The news stories on the timeline are also value neutral. An investor needs to look at each one carefully to see if it is actually meaningful or merely the reaction of a keyword search.
Make no mistake, the pages are easy to read and powerful on their own - but I still have to consult an external source for any type of real analytical tools.
The Portfolio Page
Is worthless. Providing no way to chart the portfolio's progress is highly limiting. Plus, due to the intricacies of taxation, most people have their retirement accounts spread all over the place. We have them in two countries and spread between IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, SEP IRAs, Roth IRAs, straight investments and property. Track that in this UI:
I dare you.
Compare this to the CNBC site, which does a nice job of tracking things over time - but forces you to use Internet Explorer. I would love to use something other than IE. My broker's site is utterly worthless, I hate the layout of Yahoo, and so I stick with CNBC and, because of this (and my extreme dislike of using IE) my portfolio falls out of date. However, it lets me categorize things, chart investments with or against each other, and engage in some deep analysis. IE or not, Microsoft and CNBC win big in the free portfolio provision.
The Thought
There's a deeper issue than stock quotes and analysis. Google's philosophy is allegedly based entirely on search and minimalism. Try to provide the least UI to get to the most information. The most information is a function of search. John Battelle reports that Google is planning to tie this in with Google Groups and that they are getting into the content game and going head to head with Yahoo!. I can buy that this is a direction they are going in - but I feel their culture will keep the focus on search and minimalism.
Is this bad or good? I'm not certain. It depends on execution in the long run.
Benefits:
- Always focusing on the most convenient road to information
- Always focusing on leveraging existing information as opposed to forcing the creation of new content
- Avoiding clutter that always seems to engender less readable, less accessible pages.
- Focusing on highest value features always
Disbenefits
- One-size-fits-all feature priority mentality
- Feeling "good enough" is complete (look at Blogger's languishing)
- Thin clients with only high priority feature sets don't satisfy daily needs
- Search focus leads to information tunnel vision
Final Words
A side note I couldn't fit elsewhere, the UI includes some DHTML enhancements that I find nice, like this mouseover for director bio information:
Oh, I also like that they track what blogs are saying about stocks. That's really nice too.
Technorati Tags: google, stocks, battelle, financial, google financial, financial.google
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