Google Finance launched

Google launched its finance service today to compete with Yahoo and MSN‘s offerings. From the WSJ:

Google Finance follows the traditional recipe for such offerings, providing a mix of stock quotes and charts, company news and corporate data. It is too early to know whether Google Finance will steal users from existing offerings, but the Mountain View, Calif., Internet company’s broad consumer reach and recent success with new services such as Google Maps suggest its arrival could cause established providers of online financial news and data to react.

Google said the quality of interactive charts, the breadth of its news sources and its skill at pulling in other information from the Web will set it apart from rivals.

Charlene Li has a detailed review of the site and Steve Rubel points out that each stock detail includes related blog posts.

My first impression is the breadth of information displayed after typing in a stock symbol. Google will be able to make significant gains in this aspect with the resources at its disposal. For someone who doesn’t use another service, Google Finance is a good choice. The problem lies with those of us who have extensive portfolios and watch lists on other services. I’ve been using My Yahoo and Yahoo Finance for years. Do I really want to transfer all of this data by hand? Also, Google only currently allows for a single portfolio. Most investors will need at least two – the actual positions held and a watch list. Personally, I break mine down into IRA, Roth IRA, taxable portfolio, 401k, and then numerous watch lists. The ability to add multiple portfolios will be a limiting factor for many. Once Google takes care of this issue (which I’m sure it will), the service will be better.