on 3/22/2006 (91 reads)
Computing News : "Google Takes On Yahoo, MSN With New Finance Site"

Charles Menter, Webmaster, CharlesMenter(dot)com (charles.menter@charlesmenter.com), announced "Google Inc. unveiled a new feature yesterday that will provide financial news, stock charts and other corporate data, signaling yet another move to compete with portals such as Yahoo Inc."

Subject: Computing News
Date: Wednesday, March 22, 2006
From: Charles Menter <charles.menter@charlesmenter.com>

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; D04


Google Inc. unveiled a new feature yesterday that will provide financial news, stock charts and other corporate data, signaling yet another move to compete with portals such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, which have long dominated business information on the Web.

Although Google Finance ( http://www.google.com/finance ) is late to the party, analysts said they expect the company to shake up the market, mostly because of Google's track record of success with new services. Financial Web sites can be particularly lucrative because advertisers are attracted to the users -- typically high-income, well-educated adults who spend a long time on the sites.

There are no immediate plans, however, to run advertisements or unique editorial content on Google Finance, which was launched in a test format yesterday.

“Our goal for right now is to focus on the user and the product,” said Katie Jacobs Stanton, senior project manager of Google Finance. After Google fine-tunes its new site, “we'll explore options” to generate revenue, she said.

Google's financial site offers much of the standard corporate information that its competitors offer but also offers some unique features, such as interactive charts and company-related blogs.

The search giant faces stiff competition from well-established players such as Yahoo and MSN, which have offered online financial information for a decade and receive about 10 million monthly visitors each.

“The pressure is on two groups: the Yahoos of the world, because once Google gets into the business they must continue to innovate; and companies that provide premium services in this space,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst with Gartner Inc. “If you pay for [financial] information through a service from Lexis-Nexis, for example, it will be important for them to show differentiation as to why you would pay for this if Google offers it for free.”

Indeed, Yahoo said it plans to offer “many more services” on Yahoo Finance in the coming year but declined to provide specific details.

“Our users spend more than twice the amount of time with us than any other financial site on the Web, so I think that clearly when you look at Yahoo Finance versus our competitors, there's breadth and there's depth,” said division general manager Peggy White.

MSN also said it plans an upgrade to its offerings in May, with easier ways to view investment information and message board applications, said Microsoft spokeswoman Trudy Anthony-Hoppe.

People tend to be more loyal to the financial Web sites than others, and that could define Google's success, said Kenneth Cassar, chief analyst at Nielsen-NetRatings. “Yahoo and MSN have done a good job of building tools that create competitive barriers,” Cassar said.

Google said its finance site still needs some tweaking. Searches for information on a particular industry gave somewhat disjointed results.

For example, a search of “airlines” provided information on some -- but not all -- airlines that are publicly owned in the United States and overseas, as well as information on Boeing Co.

And then there's the first offering in the results of a Google search for “Google Finance” -- a link to the Yahoo Finance Web site.

Charles Menter
Webmaster, CharlesMenter(dot)com
charles.menter@charlesmenter.com