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Google Finance
Google Finance screenshot
Developer:	Google
OS:	Any (web based application)
Use:	Financial information site
Website:	http://finance.google.com/

On March 21, 2006, Google, Inc. launched the new Google Finance website (Official Blog Post). The service features the latest business and enterprise headlines for many corporations including their financial decisions and major news events about the company in question as well as stock information with an Adobe Flash-based stock price chart, which allows users to examine current as well as past company stock data. The site also displays relevant blog posts on a company, and features a Google groups-like forum for each company. Recently, the functionality to compare stock data between multiple tickers simultaneously was added.

Google launched a revamped version of their finance site on December 12, 2006, featuring a new homepage design which lets users see currency information, sector performance for the U.S. market, and a listing of top market movers along with the relevant and important news of the day. A top movers section was also added, based on popularity determined by Google Trends. The upgrade also featured charts containing up to 40 years of data for U.S. stocks, and richer portfolio options.

When the flash plugin is unavailable on the clients browser, an image version is given with the message "For the ubercool interactive charts, you will need to install the Macromedia Flash Player".

A major criticism of Google Finance compared to many other leading online financial pages is that it is too US-centred, and information from other countries is either minimal or non-existent.

On Dec 15, 2006, Hitwise published a report siting a dismal market share of 0.78% market share relative to Yahoo's 37.3% market share in the finance category. This was quite ironic and surprising given that Google hired Yahoo Finance management to start Google Finance. Google Finance is also one of the rare Google products that is developed entirely offshore.

Google Finance is often cited as an example of an unsuccessful foray into a web service beyond web search, of which Google has many but only a fraction of which have attained a large and devoted following. As of November 2006, eight months after being launched, Google Finance has 579,000 users, as opposed to Yahoo Finance's 13.7 million. Yahoo users also spend about 28 minutes on their finance site, approximately double the time of Google Finance users.

• Google Finance website

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