Updates on charts!

Posted by Andrey Khorlin, Google Finance 20% Engineer

We've gotten a lot of great feedback and suggestions on how to improve our charts. In response, today we're unveiling an updated UI as well as some new tools. The new chart UI makes it easier to compare stocks, indices and even mutual funds. In the "compare" tab, we provide some suggestions on what you might like to compare a stock with, such as industry competitors or general market indices. Or feel free to add your own stock, index or mutual fund.



In addition, we have a bunch of new features to help analyze public companies. First, you can now "link to chart" with all of your settings preserved. For example, take a look at this 2-year comparison between Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO) and S&P 500. Copy and paste the link from the "Link To Chart" tab, then send a link to your friend or include it in your blog.



Another feature we've recently added is support for logarithmic scale, which is extremely useful when viewing charts that have large changes in price. Just compare the 10-year chart for i2 Technologies Inc (ITWO). Without logarithmic scale, the current behavior of the stock is hard to see.

Linear chart:



Logarithmic chart:



In the comments section, please let us know what you think of these additions as well as what other chart features you would like to see.

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The fine lines ...

Posted by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Group Product Manager

One of our favorite testers for Google Finance features is also a member of a fantastic local singing group, The Richter Scales, in San Francisco. They put the following video and song together to help us all take the edge out of the subprime meltdown. Enjoy!

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User experience research

Posted by Marianne Berkovich, User Experience Researcher, Google Finance

I've recently joined the Google Finance team as a user experience researcher. My role is to observe, talk with, and otherwise hang out with people using Google Finance. Simply put, we want to learn how you use the site and how we can improve it. Your comments on this blog and through the Help Center are great sources of feedback; our research activities are another way you can share your thoughts with us. All of these activities help us to get more focused insight on a particular topic -- for example, how you use portfolios, or what type of community features you'd like to see. Our research activities might include:

- surveys
- remote or in-person usability studies
- field studies (at your home or office)

Please sign up if you're interested in participating in upcoming research projects.

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Historical LSE data

Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome

We now have historical daily prices for LSE stocks (like Vodafone or British Airways) back to 1996. You'll note that splits have been imported, but dividends have not. Dividends will follow along shortly.

If you notice any problems, please let us know.

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A new help center

Posted by Ben Softness, Google Finance Support Lead

As part of our continuing effort to provide quick and easily accessible answers to your concerns and questions about Google Finance, we recently launched our brand new online help center. You can find the help center by clicking "About Google Finance" at the bottom of any Google Finance page or by pointing your browser to http://www.google.com/support/finance.

Whether you want to learn how to use a particular feature or seek information about how Google Finance works, the help center is your best resource. Plus, we've listed the five most common questions and made the entire site searchable from any help center page, so accessing the information that's most relevant to you is easier than ever.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. While we can't promise an answer to every message we receive, know that we read everything you send us and that we use your feedback to improve Google Finance.

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Google Notebook can help with your research

Posted by Nick Fey, Google Finance designer

When we study how people make and gather notes when researching companies online, almost everyone tends to use a word processor, a spreadsheet, or (sadly) scraps of paper. Whatever they use, there seems to be consensus that they're generally dissatisfied with the approach and tools they use. We have something you may be unaware of which could solve some of these same problems. It's called Google Notebook.

Key features:

• It uses a browser plugin -- you can make notes no matter what website you're on.
• Create a notebook for each company you're researching to stay organized.
  
• Collaborate on notebooks with specific friends, coworkers, clients, investment club members.
• Search your notes to locate anything easily.
• No typing needed -- just highlight the text on the screen and drop it into your notes with one click.

Visit the Google Notebook website (http://www.google.com/notebook/) or take the Google Notebook tour.

Once you download and install the browser plugin you can access a notebook at any time from the bottom of your web browser.



Clicking on this icon at any time brings up the notebook which sits on top of the content of the page you are on. In the image below I have created a new notebook called 'Google Research':



I can highlight some content on the page like this:



...and hit the clip button on the notebook which drops the highlighted content into a note. Luckily it keeps the formatting.


Now I can highlight the whole market summary section, copy (Ctrl-C on my PC) and paste (Ctrl-V) it into the notepad. It pulls in all the formatting and images!



I can pop out the notebook to exist in a new window. Here I have navigated to the Financials page, highlighted a section of the table and pasted it straight in the notebook.



As part of my Google research I also pay a visit to Yahoo Finance and notice a news story that catches my eye. As the notebook is integrated with the browser I can clip the story straight into the same notebook. It retains the link to the story for me to access at a later date.



At the end of my research session I can visit the Google Notebook main site and here I have options to add collaborators and share the research with a co-worker who can type notes in themselves, clip or paste in their own website content. Here is also a search box where I can easily locate any notes I have previously made.



We are currently thinking through some ideas to integrate Google Notebook more closely with Google Finance to make the functionality even more useful. For example, displaying notes made about a company on the company page chart as flags similar to how we currently display news articles. We would love to hear your own ideas in the comments. If you give Notebook a try, please leave a comment describing how you got on with it and share any tips you come up with to help other Google Finance users make the most of this cool tool.

Update: Made a correction in the first paragraph.

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Finance in iGoogle

Posted by Nick Fey, Google Finance designer

There are some great Finance gadgets available on iGoogle (personalized Google search page), but it can be challenging to find the best Finance gadgets. Recently the iGoogle team have introduced the 'Share tab' feature which allows you to share a whole tab of gadgets. This has allowed us to pull together a collection of some of our favorite iGoogle gadgets and share them with you. If you click on the link below you will see an invitation to create a new iGoogle tab.

Add a Google Finance recommended iGoogle tab

Go ahead and click on the blue 'Add to iGoogle' button and it will create the new tab for you with these suggested gadgets.

You should see something similar to the screenshot below.



Now every time you do a web search you can view a quick overview of the market and see what is moving and shaking in your portfolios

One enhancement I would recommend is to add some Finance RSS feeds to the Google reader gadget. If you have not used Reader yet, you have been missing out big time. The big advantage with the Reader gadget is that you can read the story right on your iGoogle page rather than having to go to another website.

To set up your Reader gadget just follow these quick steps:

1. Click on the 'Google Reader' gadget title which is a link to the Google Reader main page.



2. Click on the 'Browse >>' link in the green 'Add subscription' box.



3. Ignore the 'Fun' group for now (there will be time for fun later) and follow the 'More bundles' link.



4. You can click on the 'subscribe' icon in the Finance group which will add a bundle of Finance RSS feeds to Reader in one go.



5. You are all done! Head back to your new iGoogle page and take a look at the updated Reader gadget.

If you don't like any of the RSS feeds you can click on the 'Google Reader' title again and remove them from the list. There are plenty more feeds out there that you may prefer and they are easy to search for and add to your reading list. Try adding http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/ and you can see when there is a new post to this blog.

The Finance team is busy building useful new gadgets and we are also building tools to enable you to easily make your own Finance gadgets to share with the Google Finance community. We will let you know when we get some cool new stuff to check out. As always, we encourage you to leave comments with any suggestions for what you would like to see.

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