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Google Finance Upgrade on the Money

Vishesh Kumar

The new functionality is scheduled to be publicly announced on Google's company blog Tuesday and is intended to help Google Finance improve a service that has lagged far behind those offered by rivals Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and AOL(TWX Quote) since its inception in March 2006.

Google's most recent changes -- a revamped user interface, a bigger bundling of historic data to work with its charts, a new way to sort through companies based on the day's news, the ability to import and customize portfolios, a new homepage design that allows users to monitor sector performance -- are the first steps of what hopefully marks a greater emphasis on a service that should get a lot more attention from the search giant.

Indeed, many of the new additions are a step in the right direction and a marked improvement, such as the streamlined user interface and the feature allowing investors to easily track sector performance.

The new interface makes the site considerably nimbler and easier to navigate. The sector feature enables investors to be tipped off to broader market movements -- such as an overall rotation into basic materials or health care, for example -- that can be more telling than the action in just one stock.

Other features, meanwhile, continue to be driven by Google's penchant to put what it sees as its strong suits -- be it interactivity or search -- ahead of a hardheaded consideration of what would best serve investors who use the site.

The integration of up to 40 years of historic data into its charts, for example, is an impressive accomplishment. But it's tough to see how having the stock price of General Motors(GM Quote) in 1972, for example, translates into a big advantage for investors.

Even more so than vision, the biggest challenge for Google Finance will be its alarming lack of resources, especially considering the company's hordes of engineers.

All Cylinders Not Firing

Google Finance has fewer than 10 engineers working on the product, with four of those devoting a scant 20% of their time to the effort under Google's famed system of allowing engineers to devote one-fifth of their time on test projects that are not their main staple, says Katie Stanton, product manager of Google Finance.

But when it comes to its Finance site, Google should be putting a lot more muscle behind the rollout. Unlike many of Google's heavily anticipated product launches, including Gmail -- the company's widely adopted and acclaimed email system -- or Google's News Site, Google Finance has yet to make a big splash in the marketplace.

Google Finance counted only 579,000 unique users in October, compared with 13.7 million for market leader Yahoo! Finance, according to researcher Nielsen Net Ratings. Microsoft's Finance site saw 11.7 million unique users in the same period, while AOL Finance logged 10.3 million.

It's still too early in the game to pass a verdict on Google Finance, says Stanton, and 2007 will likely be the make-or-break year for the site.

Though she acknowledges that the reception to Google Finance has not been spectacular so far, she says that the site was launched sooner than it could have been with an eye to working out kinks based on user feedback.

Still, for Google, a company with some 85 identifiable products, the time draws nigh to decide what to keep and what to kill. Letting products languish under the label of experimentation will ultimately drag down the Google brand.

The company recently showed that it was capable of doing away with struggling projects when it quashed its lagging Google Answers service -- the first time a significant Google project had been publicly scrapped.

But the company should take the other road when it comes to Google Finance.

A win there would give it more than a strong product in a fast-growing field -- it would show that the company was able to apply to successfully leverage its deep technical roots into richer media environments it will increasingly find itself competing in.

Trimming down on many other product lines may be the order for Google. But doubling down on its Finance site could be a promising investment.