It’s like Google read my mind
It’s a rainy day in New York and I’m taking some time to look for new investments.
I’ve been digging into NAVTEQ and one of my first stops was Yahoo! Finance. I’m not what I would call an experienced investor, but I know a bit and I’ve browsed both Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance.
The first thing on my mind was the significant gap between NAVTEQ’s 52-week high ($55.86) and its 52-week low ($23.73). The current price ($26.29) is pretty close to the 52-week low, which might indicate a great buy. However, the vast difference between the high and low is not due to external market factors. I need to understand what’s at play before I invest my hard-earned money.
With the above in mind, I decided my first task was to track NVT’s price fluctuations throughout the year. The first place I looked was the default Yahoo! Finance chart.
The Yahoo! chart was small and defaulted to a one-day display. Though clicking on the chart enlarges it and allows for an expanded timeframe, I wasn’t sure how to map either view of the chart to the company events throughout the year. I was mildly annoyed by this, so I absentmindedly clicked around a bit and eventually made my way to Google Finance.
After searching for NVT on Google Finance the first thing I saw was a huge, legible chart. This chart has interactive controls that allows quick scrolling across days. There are various zoom levels (one year, six months, etc.) and there are small letters on the chart that correspond to events that are summarized in a list directly to the right of the chart. The list updates dynamically based on the currently-selected date in the chart and the overall timeframe shown. Clicking on a day on the chart displays the closing price for that day as well as trading volume. All this happens via AJAX; there are no page refreshes.
Google’s chart is exactly what I need. I’ve seen the Google Finance charts before, but I never realized how valuable they were because previously I didn’t have a specific task in mind. Now that I have a mission I find Google Finance gives me the tools I need to efficiently complete it.
Google gets criticized for releasing half-baked products. On one hand I respect that perspective. Many Google products are in perpetual beta status. Yahoo! products (and others) have been around a lot longer and are more feature-rich.
However, in several cases Google products like Gmail, Personalized Homepage (a rough competitor to My Yahoo!), and now Google Finance do the things that matter to me a lot better than others out there. Often Google seems to have realized what I really want before I do.
Gmail doesn’t use folders, which I quickly decided was a benefit, at least for personal email. (Professional email is another discussion.) Gmail provides a simple, one-click (or keyboard shortcut) “Archive” feature and great message search. I didn’t know I wanted either of these things, but I’m addicted to them now. I’ve been on Gmail for over a year, which is the longest I’ve used a single email client (Web-based or otherwise).
The Personalized Homepage is simple, ad-free, allows third parties to develop functionality (though My Yahoo! may do this now, too), and displays Gmail messages and Google Reader items. I’ve had a My Yahoo! page for years and could never figure out why I rarely used it. Now I realize having banner ads and other hard-coded content on my “personal” page really bothers me. I use my Google Personalized Homepage every day.
Google Finance is helping me do the investing tasks that matter most to me. Google Finance’s lack of banner ads and advertising for add-on services doesn’t hurt, either.
I expect the services to change and I expect to see more advertising on some if not all of them. However, if my experience with Gmail is any indicator Google will probably integrate advertising in a way that’s non-offensive and doesn’t distract.
So I sound like a Google shill. I can’t help it, their stuff just hits me the right way.