Google Finance used to have all these features. They were already implemented and working fine in 2009! The original chart tool was much better than the current version. You could see every dividend that was issued, splits, add moving averages, etc.
Then they "simplified" it by removing all the best features and are now adding them back?
Why would I bother to use this when they have so thoroughly torched their goodwill by senselessly killing off working (and good!) products?
So obviously they didn't choose to remove features, they were forced to rebuild it from scratch.
And along the way, instead of it being a standalone product (which was really only justified because of competition from Yahoo Finance etc.), it made more sense for it to be simply part of Search, and so give simpler results.
Does that make sense? I don't think they torched anyone's goodwill here. It's not senseless -- to the contrary, there was a lot of sense to what they did.
If you want a serious finance tool, Google (or Apple) stock "apps" are probably not going to be the right choice in the first place.
The world of computers is "reinvent, but slightly different".
Remember the "Briefcase" sync feature of windows 95... Now compare that to Dropbox syncing... Pretty much the same thing 25 years on. Different UI, same principle.
I also hate it when apps/services move backward in terms of features. I'll still give them credit when they start to move in the correct direction again, even if they would have been better off not screwing things up in the first place.
And the timeline was annotated with significant news events, which was truly fantastic. This used to be an amazing product. Still, it's free, so I'm not going to complain too much.
I just never understood how Google, with 100,000 employees, could let such a mainstream product display such shoddy functionality that is not rocket science.
Their interface couldn't drag and drop stock tickers, reorganize your list, update correctly, etc. Basic usability.
Maybe I don't know how tech companies' product management works, if it's underresourced or what, but such a giant company allowing a product (a simple, basic, not even requiring huge product innovation) to sleepwalk is hard to understand.
Do their team not get rewarded for working on basic, non-flashy products? Is that why it stagnated?
There isn't much money to be derived from the product (as is) and it takes a small team of people to focus on it in order to maintain it. Someone with at least a modicum of influence has to care about the product and drive resources at it persistently so it doesn't rot. Google is unlikely to want to go further and build or acquire a stock broker business, so they're going to struggle to extract much money out of the category over time.
This is Google doing the bare minimum as an alternative to just shutting down another product. I'm surprised it has survived this long.
In 2011, I was heading development at Citadel's Investment Bank (Citadel being a large hedge fund), after finishing a stint as Citigroup Investment Bank's Chief Architect. I used Google Finance to track my personal portfolio, and I had always wondered about using the scale of Google to make Google Finance a competitor to Bloomberg and Reuters.
Someone reached out to me and asked me to interview for the position of "CTO of Google Finance", and I jumped at the chance. First interview was with Phillip Brittain, who was the new Head of Product of GF, having come from Bloomberg. The interview went great ... a complete meeting of the minds as far as where we wanted to take GF. Then I was invited in for the normal in-person Google interview process. I did well enough on my second round to be asked back to do the whole-day set of interviews. The interviews were really fascinated ... a lot of system design questions. But when I described some of the solutions in terms in terms of some of the platforms that financial companies use (ie: Tibco EMS for messaging), I was told by the interviewers to not bring them into my domain.
Funny enough, ove rthe two days of interviews, not a single person asked me a question about Google Finance or what my vision was for GF.
After several weeks, I heard that I did not have enough support of the Hiring Commitee to be hired. I was a bit puzzled, because I though that I knocked the interviews out of the park, but I went back to my job at Citadel and stayed there until they dissolved the investment bank a few months later.
Google never hired anyone for that position. Several years later, a Googler that I knew confided to me that I did not get the job mostly for the reason that Google had quietly decided to sunset GF ... or, at least, reduce its capabilities. No desire for a Bloomberg killer. What a shame. I still think of what I could have done with GF given the scale of Google.
Gosh, it's amazing how they just refuse to make this tool powerful. Still can't set a custom date range, or add technical indicators. I mean these are like 2003 requirements for a decent site let alone 2020. Just off the top of my head..historical data, SEC filings, better volume data, options pricing..
I used to love this product. They explicitly told users to go away a couple years ago. These updates still pale to the old functionality and I am not putting my data back into Google Finance because at some point they will get tired of supporting it and tell me to go away again.
Google Finance looks similar to Robinhood's UI. Though I've heard rumors of Google having an internal team 'google treasury' that trades stocks. I would actually be surprised if Google didn't have an internal team doing so. Similar to Jane Street/Rentech/TGS. Google has loads of more data though.
It's definitely not the actual google treasury team.... and knowing the shitstorm that they would get from that getting leaked, I doubt there's a shadow hedge fund running in google.
Besides the obvious waste and weird decision making of this event, I want to share a bit how this affect the engineers working on the product.
I was directly involved in the internal (open) debate (as a bystander and G Finance user at the time) when GFinance team were disbanded and the decision were made to fold it into Search.
Back then myself and the then TL of GFinance were engaged in some not so pleasant private messaging over internal mails. And I eventually asked HR to step in so that we can both stop engaging with each other.
At the time I was very confused why he would be defending the decision, which was obviously nonsensical, given how different are Finance data and Search, and how valuable is the finance data. Now I can see he probably were too professional and would want to still believe the company actually still cares about the little piece of product area that he has devoted a part of his career into.
Fast forward in 2019, I was directly hit by a reorg, where my own project, which I need to work with my manager to directly appeal to the Great Urs Hozle to get an approval (Urs personally rejected the staffing plan previous year), was transferred from Sunnyvale to Warsaw, during the time I am on a baby-bounding leave, and without consulting myself...
Well, at the moment I see how futile was it to spend my quickly diminishing creative life at this giant bubble. That's when I joined PixieLabs (https://pixielabs.ai/).
Oof, this is like a glorified "my first stock monitor" app. No options drill down, no relevant news or dates, not even comparisons! This is sad and significantly inferior to the old experience - certainly material UI alone wasn't THAT big of a feature?
Most of the "new" features are just eye candy, but usability is still very poor and way behind what they had 10 years ago. You can't do even the most trivial things, like sorting stocks in your watch-list by market value or P/E ratio, comparing two stocks side by side etc.
I don't use either now, but Google Finance always felt like an also-ran product. It started out with some good features but never quite matched Yahoo Finance. In particular, the GF portfolio tool was quite basic next to Yahoos. That said, it's been a few years since I've used either. Dealing with options on GF was a bit of a pain also.
Now, I either stick to the really basic stuff in the stocks app or use Amaeritrade's iPad app which is pretty decent for low level research and I can trade from it.
Feels like the days of having a stocks/ business web page are gone, at least for me.
The original from years ago had a solid portfolio management tool where you could track your cost basis and positions. Still haven't found another replacement for that other than good 'ol Excel...
And you still can't do a basic slider to set a time range?
I want to see a zoom of how the stock did from 2012 through 2015. This functionality was stripped and still not returned?
This is the equivalent of having 5 inconsistently scaled preset zoom levels on Google maps. Zooming in isn't complex, and a lack of it completely weakens how you used a map product (or stock viewer).
It's amazing to me that they still haven't fixed what they tore out. Google really struggles with supporting customer products.
Has the same bizarre bug as yahoo finance. Go to the search box and type "F" without the quotes. That's Ford Motor's stock symbol. Press enter. What does it bring up? The first match for "F" which was "FTSE 100". Dumb dumb dumb. If you want "F" [1] you have to click the 2nd or 3rd or whatever result. Painfully bad design.
[1] Or TIPS or IEF or SHY or basically everything I've tested.
Still missing transaction tracking. Hopefully it will come back some day. I migrated to https://wallmine.com/ when Google Finance announced it was neutering itself. However, I've noticed Wallmine's listings are not always complete. As a couple examples: the insurance company Root isn't listed, the label for JAMF isn't correct.
Haven't looked at what is out there in a while, any other alternatives people are using?
A bit off topic, but does anyone know of a good competitor to the old Google Finance? I loved the old site where you can stack indicators and fancy box and whisker charts.
[+] [-] oramit|5 years ago|reply
Google Finance used to have all these features. They were already implemented and working fine in 2009! The original chart tool was much better than the current version. You could see every dividend that was issued, splits, add moving averages, etc. Then they "simplified" it by removing all the best features and are now adding them back?
Why would I bother to use this when they have so thoroughly torched their goodwill by senselessly killing off working (and good!) products?
[+] [-] crazygringo|5 years ago|reply
So obviously they didn't choose to remove features, they were forced to rebuild it from scratch.
And along the way, instead of it being a standalone product (which was really only justified because of competition from Yahoo Finance etc.), it made more sense for it to be simply part of Search, and so give simpler results.
Does that make sense? I don't think they torched anyone's goodwill here. It's not senseless -- to the contrary, there was a lot of sense to what they did.
If you want a serious finance tool, Google (or Apple) stock "apps" are probably not going to be the right choice in the first place.
[+] [-] londons_explore|5 years ago|reply
Remember the "Briefcase" sync feature of windows 95... Now compare that to Dropbox syncing... Pretty much the same thing 25 years on. Different UI, same principle.
[+] [-] goodluckchuck|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexharrisnyc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xnx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esseti|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] KingMachiavelli|5 years ago|reply
Biggest gripe is that the URL format can't be user to directly open a stock's page without remembering the exchange a given stock is on.
This URL will bring up Google's stock:
> https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GOOG:NASDAQ
This URL will not:
> https://www.google.com/finance/quote/GOOG
[+] [-] jordache|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flowerlad|5 years ago|reply
The new SVG replacement is not as good.
[+] [-] Denvercoder9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|5 years ago|reply
Sadly this seems to continue down Google's trend of simplified controls, fewer power-user type interfaces.
[+] [-] xibalba|5 years ago|reply
And the timeline was annotated with significant news events, which was truly fantastic. This used to be an amazing product. Still, it's free, so I'm not going to complain too much.
[+] [-] kevindong|5 years ago|reply
It flew through every action without ever hiccuping for me.
[+] [-] supernova87a|5 years ago|reply
Their interface couldn't drag and drop stock tickers, reorganize your list, update correctly, etc. Basic usability.
Maybe I don't know how tech companies' product management works, if it's underresourced or what, but such a giant company allowing a product (a simple, basic, not even requiring huge product innovation) to sleepwalk is hard to understand.
Do their team not get rewarded for working on basic, non-flashy products? Is that why it stagnated?
[+] [-] adventured|5 years ago|reply
This is Google doing the bare minimum as an alternative to just shutting down another product. I'm surprised it has survived this long.
[+] [-] brown9-2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] htrp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magmasystems|5 years ago|reply
In 2011, I was heading development at Citadel's Investment Bank (Citadel being a large hedge fund), after finishing a stint as Citigroup Investment Bank's Chief Architect. I used Google Finance to track my personal portfolio, and I had always wondered about using the scale of Google to make Google Finance a competitor to Bloomberg and Reuters.
Someone reached out to me and asked me to interview for the position of "CTO of Google Finance", and I jumped at the chance. First interview was with Phillip Brittain, who was the new Head of Product of GF, having come from Bloomberg. The interview went great ... a complete meeting of the minds as far as where we wanted to take GF. Then I was invited in for the normal in-person Google interview process. I did well enough on my second round to be asked back to do the whole-day set of interviews. The interviews were really fascinated ... a lot of system design questions. But when I described some of the solutions in terms in terms of some of the platforms that financial companies use (ie: Tibco EMS for messaging), I was told by the interviewers to not bring them into my domain.
Funny enough, ove rthe two days of interviews, not a single person asked me a question about Google Finance or what my vision was for GF.
After several weeks, I heard that I did not have enough support of the Hiring Commitee to be hired. I was a bit puzzled, because I though that I knocked the interviews out of the park, but I went back to my job at Citadel and stayed there until they dissolved the investment bank a few months later.
Google never hired anyone for that position. Several years later, a Googler that I knew confided to me that I did not get the job mostly for the reason that Google had quietly decided to sunset GF ... or, at least, reduce its capabilities. No desire for a Bloomberg killer. What a shame. I still think of what I could have done with GF given the scale of Google.
[+] [-] wittyusername|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] howlgarnish|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|5 years ago|reply
https://blog.google/products/search/google-finance-makes-inv...
[+] [-] mimikatz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snakedoctor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] htrp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anomaly_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justicezyx|5 years ago|reply
I was directly involved in the internal (open) debate (as a bystander and G Finance user at the time) when GFinance team were disbanded and the decision were made to fold it into Search.
Back then myself and the then TL of GFinance were engaged in some not so pleasant private messaging over internal mails. And I eventually asked HR to step in so that we can both stop engaging with each other.
At the time I was very confused why he would be defending the decision, which was obviously nonsensical, given how different are Finance data and Search, and how valuable is the finance data. Now I can see he probably were too professional and would want to still believe the company actually still cares about the little piece of product area that he has devoted a part of his career into.
Fast forward in 2019, I was directly hit by a reorg, where my own project, which I need to work with my manager to directly appeal to the Great Urs Hozle to get an approval (Urs personally rejected the staffing plan previous year), was transferred from Sunnyvale to Warsaw, during the time I am on a baby-bounding leave, and without consulting myself...
Well, at the moment I see how futile was it to spend my quickly diminishing creative life at this giant bubble. That's when I joined PixieLabs (https://pixielabs.ai/).
[+] [-] vorpalhex|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipozgaj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
Now, I either stick to the really basic stuff in the stocks app or use Amaeritrade's iPad app which is pretty decent for low level research and I can trade from it.
Feels like the days of having a stocks/ business web page are gone, at least for me.
[+] [-] ant6n|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wonnk13|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilsb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BoiledCabbage|5 years ago|reply
I want to see a zoom of how the stock did from 2012 through 2015. This functionality was stripped and still not returned?
This is the equivalent of having 5 inconsistently scaled preset zoom levels on Google maps. Zooming in isn't complex, and a lack of it completely weakens how you used a map product (or stock viewer).
It's amazing to me that they still haven't fixed what they tore out. Google really struggles with supporting customer products.
[+] [-] mynameishere|5 years ago|reply
[1] Or TIPS or IEF or SHY or basically everything I've tested.
[+] [-] derivagral|5 years ago|reply
I haven't used the crippled version in years, why would I ever go back?
[+] [-] seanf|5 years ago|reply
Haven't looked at what is out there in a while, any other alternatives people are using?
[+] [-] kordlessagain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syntaxing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwh|5 years ago|reply