Google's Finance Site Fumble

Google Finance is difficult to navigate, with chunks of haphazardly arranged data often crowding pages.

Google's efforts to integrate news events with the company's chart often mean that when you look up an individual stock, you find a cluttered, heavy graph crowded with many trivial events that have little impact on shares. Google's efforts to include blogs wholesale, meanwhile, often litter the page with musings of little relevance. Google Finance needs to draw on several other sites for its information -- including Yahoo! Finance -- and the integration is often sloppy.

All in all, Google Finance seems to be a tribute to how much financial data can be put on one page. How investors might use the site and data seems to be an afterthought.

Google's forays into arenas beyond search are especially important to examine at a time when earnings growth in its only line of business show signs of slowing. Much like its famously hyper product strategy, Google has not been shy about experimenting when it comes to new ways to generate revenue. On Tuesday, the company announced a deal with Verizon (VZ Quote) to provide content from YouTube, the video Web site Google bought in October.

Google also recently announced it would work with some major newspapers to sell ads and is expected to make a bigger push into radio ads as well.