Best Websites
Since
1998 BestWebsites.com.my features thousands of best websites
in many
categories of interest with descriptions/reviews given by leading
publications and webmasters.
Google Launches Financial
Information Service - Going Beyond the First Page
(Page 2 of 2 )
One
of the resources listed was a discussion group in Google Finance. I
clicked that link, half-expecting to be taken to a bulletin board.
Instead, I got a link to a thread with the topic of "Long term view on
IBM stock." While there was only
one message in the discussion, it was more efficient than going to the
board.
I
noticed, though, that the
search box at the top of this
page gave me the option of searching discussions or searching finance.
So, for the heck of it, I decided to run a search on
Intel. Surprisingly, this didn't
match any documents! Hmmm. I tried again with
Apple. Again, it didn't match. It
took me a moment to realize the search was limiting itself to the IBM
thread. I went back to Google Finance, conjured a page for Apple, and
then looked for the discussion group resource in the same place as I
had found it for IBM. To my surprise, it wasn't there. Instead, right
under the
blogs, there was another box,
labeled "Discussions," with links to several ongoing discussions about
Apple. There must have been about 25 of them. I guess Apple investors
are much chattier than IBM investors!
The
discussion group is in Google Groups. While many if not most of the
forums on Google Groups are unmoderated, the groups in Google Finance
do feature moderators. Their job is to keep the discussions spam- and
flame-free. Google already has a list of rules for its finance
community, accessible from Google Finance's FAQ.
Getting back to my investigations, I clicked on the link to go back to
Google Finance while I decided what to do next. To my surprise, I
wasn't presented with the same Google Finance
home page I saw when I started.
This one was in a two-column format. The first column looked the same
as what I saw before. The second column included recent stock quotes
for both Apple and IBM, as well as links to news stories about both
companies.
In
order to create a portfolio with Google, I needed to have an account.
As it happens, I already have one, so all I had to do was sign in.
Google pulled up the last page I'd created, which was for
Apple. A new "Portfolio" link
appeared at the top of the page, which I clicked. It took me to a
screen with three textboxes labeled "Symbol," "Price," and "Shares,"
and one button, "Add to Portfolio." I put in the symbol for Apple. A
horizontal gray bar appeared, with columns labeled "Symbol," "Last
Trade," "Change," "Buy Price," "Shares," "Investment," "Current
Value," "Gain/Loss," and "Delete." The only information filled in was
in the first three columns. Most of the information seemed pretty
self-explanatory to me; it put just about everything you'd want to
know about a stock in your portfolio at your fingertips.
There was a new button on the screen labeled "Edit portfolio."
Clicking that allowed me to fill in "Buy Price" and "Shares." It also
replaced the "Edit portfolio" button with two others, "Save changes
and "Cancel." Just to test it out, I typed in 50.00 and 100,
respectively, then hit "Save changes." Acting like a
spreadsheet, the application
filled in the rest of the information for me, showing that I was in
the green by nearly $1000. (I wish!). Clicking a box that appeared
under the "Delete" section got rid of the information.
So,
after having tried it out, what do I think of Google Finance? It's
basic, to the point of being almost rudimentary. But it has some
rather nice features, and I like the way it places so many things
right at your fingertips. It really lets you interact with the
data in whatever way you feel
ready to handle. I can't say whether it's better or worse than its
competitors, because time constraints did not permit me to compare all
of them head to head. But I understand that Yahoo! offers many more
features, including links to retirement planning, bonds, options, and
downloadable
spreadsheets for making finance
calculations. Yahoo! and
MSN are also beginning to offer
original content.
I
expect, though, that Google may start adding those features over the
next few months. Right now Google Finance is a workable beta that
particularly beginning investors should find helpful for keeping track
of their stock portfolios. It still has its flaws; for example, it
currently covers only some international companies, and it is not yet
available for countries outside of North America (though Google is
looking to expand in both those areas). Considering that this is still
a "beta," I expect it won't be too long before Google has a major
contender on its hands.
Source:
SEOchat.com
Copyright ©
2006 BestWebsites.com.my. All rights reserved. |