Interactive Q&A: Katie Jacobs Stanton, Product Manager of Google Finance 71 comments
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This is the latest in Seeking Alpha's series of interviews with leading companies of interest to our readers. These are interviews with a twist: the respondent has agreed to answer questions and respond to comments not from a single interviewer, but rather from our community of readers and contributors.
This interactive Q&A is with Katie Stanton, Product Manager for Google Finance. Google has sponsored this interview, which works like this:
- Katie briefly introduces herself and the issues she's focused on below.
- Readers and contributors can immediately start to post questions and remarks using the comment box below (Note: you need to sign up for free registration and be logged in to do so).
- Seeking Alpha editors will not filter or edit the questions and comments from readers, except to delete profane or hostile language.
- Katie will respond to the questions and remarks beginning Thursday, April 26th. Readers can track her answers and respond to them during that period.
Yahoo Finance readers may join the Q&A by following this link.
Over to Katie:
• • •
My name is Katie Jacobs Stanton and I'm a Group Product Manager at Google. One of the products I work on at Google is Google Finance. Since Seeking Alpha launched in 2004, I have been a big fan of the site, so it's truly my honor to speak to this great community.
Google Finance aims to offer new and innovative ways to make financial information more accessible and more relevant to our users as fast as possible. When we launched Google Finance a year ago, we hoped to achieve this goal with a few key features. First, we offered the easiest way to search for financial information. No longer do you need to remember a stock ticker, but you can search by company name (Cargill), product (ipod), or even management (Sergey Brin). Second, we built interactive charts that were easier to use -- just click and drag to see how your stock performed over time. Further, our charts plotted news stories to help provide context as to why a stock may have moved up or down. And third, we offered news and blogs from thousands of sources, including Seeking Alpha, to help provide a diverse range of sources.
Over the past year, we have listened very carefully to our users to see what worked, what didn't and what we needed to do to improve Google Finance. Our biggest additions over the past year included:
1. Better charts: added splits, dividends, up to 40 years of historical data, and extended hours pricing;
2. More content: added the most relevant and entertaining videos from YouTube and Google Video, category data, quotes from more international stock exchanges including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussells and Lisbon; and
3. Stronger portfolios: added the ability to import portfolios from other sites easily, drag-and-drop sorting, and transaction portfolios.
We have a full product agenda for 2007 and hope we continue to add value to our users. We would be delighted to answer any questions about Google Finance and to hear from you as to what features you would like to see most. Please leave your questions by using the comment box below.
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This article has 71 comments.
It's great of you to do this Q&A -- the honor is ours.
A couple features I'd really like to see: 1) Instead of / combined with "Related Companies" it would be nice to know the company's main competitors and partners. They are often there, but not always, and the list presently seems to be a mish-mash of related companies without any set criteria. If you could fit in related ETFs as well, that would be super. 2) In the news column, it would be nice if press releases were separated from news coverage.
A question: Is there any thought of Google partnering with online brokerages to allow some form of click-and-trade straight off a Google Finance chart?
Thanks,
Eli
These are excellent suggestions, thanks! For related ETF's, what criteria would you use to judge relationships among ETF's? We have not partnered with online brokerages for click-to-trade yet, but it's something that we have considered. It's great to get validation from you that this would be of interest.
Thanks for your great comments and for using Google Finance!
Best,
Katie
I use Google Finance as my first stop for all my financial research.
I was wondering about charts for companies listed on foreign exchanges. I notice you have a decent number of the European exchanges covered as well as Canada however, as someone who is very interested in the Asian markets, that aspect of Google Finance is currently lacking. Companies listed in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bombay would all benefit greatly from having charts directly on their stock pages, regardless of whether they also trade in the U.S. or not.
All the best,
Jonathan
We completely agree that international markets are important. Internationalization is a major focus for us in 2007 and we plan to add more market data, charts and news coverage for many overseas companies. Which international stock exchanges are most important to you, besides Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bombay? In fact, we'd love to know this from all SeekingAlpha users.
Thanks for the great feedback and for starting your research on Google Finance!
Best,
Katie
I actually use Google's personalized homepage to get my financial news/updates, but when I do drop in to Finance, I do find that, as a newcomer to the financial scene, which I'd bet a decent percentage of Google's user-base is, I don't know what everthing I'm looking at is. I could buy a book or take a class, and I will do both, but it might be a useful feature to be able to get quick bits of information as to what we're looking at when we see the market summary.
Also, it would be really interesting to be able to see historical overlays of stocks vs. their current trends.
Take care,
Nathan
What kinds of information would you like to see on this page? For example, are you looking for definitions of market data (P/E, Market Cap)? Also, can you please clarify what you mean by historical overlays vs current trends?
Thanks!
Katie
We're glad you like the charts and auto-suggest feature on our search box. We do have plans to add more bells and whistles to the charts including some technical analysis. Regarding your different chart viewing options, you can go back historically and choose the number of days to view a chart. Underneath the chart is a "sparkline" and you can click on the "grippies" at the ends to adjust for time period. We'll look into ways of making the feature more discoverable. Thanks for the feedback!
We link to MarketWatch for options data since we don't have this yet and we thought they did a pretty good job of displaying the data. Is there another provider you would like to see there?
We do have discussions or message boards on Google Finance. Go to any company page and above the market data and chart you will find a link that says "Discuss [Company]". We have a number of tools in place to help make these discussions of higher quality than what you might find elsewhere. Please give them a try and let us know what you think.
Lastly, we very much agree on real-time quotes. We have been working with Nasdaq and NYSE on this and while they have agreed, it's now before the SEC for review and approval. Stay tuned!
Best,
Katie
I agree with Eli regarding the competitive set for individual companies it seems to run the gamut in a general sector… any more focus on more tight competitive set would be handy.
Regarding charts…
ah yes, now I see that little thing that allows you to expand the timeframe, that great!
A unique flag that designates historic earnings announcement dates differently than other news items would be helpful.
The intraday detail in the charts seems to be lost after 5 days, is that just too much info to store? Particularly for some options pricing needs it would be handy to be able to go back and look at the equity price at the exact time and date the option traded which could be greater than five days ago?
Also on the charts the scale seems off for the volume information, making it pretty meaningless. (on a side note there seems to be a bug on the volume field in the summary box that shows two decimal places, seems to only occur on low volume scenarios.)
Regarding Options… when in doubt I typically type go to cboe.com, just because it feels like the most definitive of sources, although not as slick of a presentation… I am always afraid that other sources will leave out certain available expiration months like Y! sometimes does.
Other stuff that would be great to see:
Conference call transcripts (like seeking alpha provides!) and a list of future events section, ie for upcoming conferences, earnings, etc
I also like the idea of having a profile that is a little more friendly (plain English) than the ones provided… I noticed that there are sometimes links to Wikipedia that serve this purpose well, but 1. it’s buried at the bottom and 2. is not always there even when a Wikipedia entry exists.
Also a gripe about the more resources section on individual stock quote pages… there doesn’t seem to be any uniformity or logic around the more resources section… an options link appears on stocks that don’t offer options, sometimes there is a Wikipedia link, other times not, sometimes there is a Google discussions link other times not. Things like the Events (AOL Finance), research reports (Y! Finance) , Major Holders (MSN Finance), analysts estimates etc I’d all just expect to be a part of the main content offering.
Do you have any plans to make this available to bloggers or other websites, via a widget?
Thanks for the compliment and feedback! Our engineers in Bangalore worked really hard on this feature and I know they will be happy to hear how useful it is for you. We are looking at the widget landscape to see if there is demand. Is this something you would use? What are the features of a widget that would be most interesting to you? For example, do you want a chart, flexibility inUI display and what types of market data are important to you (options, equities, bonds)?
Best,
Katie
Currently Google Finance, in contrast to your competitors, has no ads on it. What has Google decided about the profitability of Google Finance? When do you think you'll start generating revenue for Google, and how will you do it?
Cheers,
Dave
Our first commitment is to our users. Once we feel that we have a strong enough site for our users to search and find financial information, we will then look into how an advertising model might fit into the equation.
Thanks for the good question!
Katie
My questions are about Google Finance and its relationship to Google Search. Google is now promoting Google Finance strongly in its search results page.
- What's your relationship with the product team for Google Search? Do you work together on integrating GF into Google Search?
- What % of traffic to Google Finance currently comes from Google Search?
- What % of traffic to GF do you think will come from Google Search 12 and 24 months out from here?
Thanks,
Ed
These are excellent questions. While I can't comment on specific traffic numbers, Google Finance is always looking for new ways to integrate with other teams at Google, including Google Search. For example, our search team recently helped us to launch the "Plus Box" feature which allows you to expand a public company snippet in a search result to view more financial information. Our teams often work together, because we share the same philosophy of focusing on the user and improving search quality.
Best,
Katie
Thanks for answering our questions. Can you tell us anything about the direction you see Google Finance developing in? What are you investing most resources in?
Thanks,
David
We're spending a lot of time improving the user experience on Google Finance, adding more international content and looking for more innovative ways for searching and managing financial information.
Thanks!
Katie
Curious on how the site decides what blog to post on the "Blog Post" section. Is it randomly generated or is there a system? (the same question can be applied to the videos)
We use many different signals to develop algorithms that determine the most relevant information to display on Google Finance. We use these algorithms to best determine the most relevant news, blogs and videos on Google Finance.
Thanks!
Katie
If you had to describe the biggest difference in approach between Google Finance and Yahoo Finance from your perspective, how would you do it?
And now a more tangential question: What's it like being based in India? Can you tell us a bit about what it's like for you to be there personally, and what you're seeing in terms of the tech industry there?
Thank you for doing this -- it's great to have you on Seeking Alpha!
David
First, it's a pleasure to do this on SeekingAlpha. They have a great product and I know everyone at Google Finance is a big fan.
I think Google Finance is most different from others in its approach to search. We've tried to make searching for financial information as easy as possible so you can search by public or private company by name or ticker, mutual funds, etf's, even by product or management name. We do other things differently, too, but I think search is the biggest differentiator.
I'm now back from India living in sunny California. India was amazing. It was a life changing experience to work with our great engineers and live in such a colorful and exciting country.
Best,
Katie
I am a big fan of Google Finance. I never buy or sell a stock without once entering the ticker in google search to look at the comparisons that come up at the top above the chart. Having the new the may have triggered a certain market response is extremely useful. I love the after market close/ extended trading feature too.
I have five questions/suggestions. Is it possible to include fuctionality to :
1) Have real time tickers instead of the delay?
2) Include a stock screener. this is one reason for me to still use Yahoo finance, i.e. to screen stocks?
3) Search for Option Chains?
4) Include before market open futures information?
5) market mover stocks and sectors such leaders and laggards of the day?
1. Yep, we agree. We have been working with Nasdaq and NYSE on this and while they have agreed, it's now before the SEC for review and approval. We'll get it out to you as soon as we can.
2. Good suggestion. Can you tell us more about what you use the screener for and what other features you would like to see?
3. We don't currently offer options data, and instead link to MarketWatch to connect users to this information. It's good to know there is a demand for it. We'll look into it.
4. We also don't have this currently, but we will look into this too!
5. This we have! Go to the front page of Google Finance and on the lower right hand side, you'll find our Top Movers section that includes the most active stocks and sectors by price, market cap, volume, dollar volume and even popularity based on Google.com searches.
News quality is something we're continually working on and appreciate this good piece of feedback. Thanks so much!
Best,
Katie
While we don't currently offer access to brokerage research, we link to a variety of reports available at the retail level through other sites. Thank you for the suggestion!
Best,
Katie
Google Finance is one of the rather rare Google apps which makes use of Flash. I'm curious, at Google what considerations go into deciding whether to go for Flash or DHTML/ Ajax/ browser vector languages like SVG?
thanks,
Philipp
We researched various languages before choosing Flash for our charts. In the end, we decided that Flash was the right tool for the job we had in mind. To be more clear, I asked our Flash (and charts) engineer, Vivi Costache, for more feedback. Vivi writes:
Until one year ago, since FF1.5 was not supporting SVG natively, the problem was simple - Flash was the way to go. Now, one might take into account the following:
1. Features that might potentially end up in your product. Things like video, animation, special effects, and sound are currently things that Flash can do and SVG can't. SVG is just vector graphics, Flash is more than that.
2. Development effort. In flash you write the code only once and it most likely renders the same in any browser that has the flash player. SVG+VML will have to be tested in each and every browser, Javascript has a lot of particularities in each one so the effort of developing and maintaining will potentially be bigger.
3. The new Flash Player is a lot faster and more modern that older flash players. You can do more, and do so faster and easier than SVG since the flash player is lightning fast.
Right now, SVG is great if you want simple vector graphics to display. If you suspect there may be features not supported by SVG, I would go with Flash.
Thanks,
Katie (and Vivi)
Can you tell us about what's going on with real time quotes? How come Google Finance still has them, whereas Yahoo Finance doesn't?
Cheers,
Chris
We don't currently support real-time quotes but we plan to as soon as the SEC reviews and approves the proposals recently submitted by NYSE and Nasdaq. Currently we offer extended hours pricing in real-time.
Thanks!
Katie
Quick follow up to my earlier question, if I may: What were the most important mistakes/approaches you wanted to avoid in building Google Finance?
David
Good question. When we launched Google Finance, we wanted to make sure we did something innovative and that solved existing problems in accessing financial information. As a result, we focused on making the search process easier. We also built our charts to be interactive and to help provide some context as to why a stock may have moved up or down by applying news flags to the chart.
Best,
Katie
I'm still a Yahoo user even though I thought that Google will be my primary research place when I first saw the charts and sticker look-up. They are extremely useful and amazing. However it appears that when I research a mew stock Yahoo has more basic information about stock on the page than Google. The most important piece of information I have been missing is dividend yield.
In addition I like very much Yahoo's ability to interact with Excel which allows me to import information directly into my spreadsheets, however the information I get from them is very limited and I was wondering if you have plans to have a similar feature to import data directly into Excel. Ability to import income statement and balance sheet items for different companies will make it super-powerful research system. Use of XBRL maybe?
Thanks for great product
These are all great features that we have been considering! We're glad to hear these are useful to you so check in with Google Finance soon! :)
Best,
Katie
I would very much like to see an ability to export information to a spreadsheet. For example, each column could represent a period of time (a day) and rows could have containing opening price, closing price, and other relevant information.
Personally, I'd use this feature to feed information to a neural network that might learn the secrets of daytrading for my senior thesis. Can you be done by next year?
thanks,
neil
While we can't really help you with the secrets of daytrading, we like the idea of downloading data. Check in with us soon for some updates.
Good luck in your studies!
Katie
Thanks for doing this. Sorry about the many questions/suggestions, but I'm
1.) You're using Reuters information for a lot of company profile stuff. This information often has errors in it like broken links and wrong spellings etc. What about giving companies themselves the ability to update certain content on Google Finance? Seems to me that for some stuff, companies themselves are the best source.
2.) Public companies are starting to add RSS feeds for their investor information. How about picking up those feeds and showing their headlines on each company's profile page? Again, this could be offered on a self-service basis? Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that companies be allowed editorial control over everything on the page, just the things for which they are the obvious authorities.
3.) How has the "plus box" in the main search results affected traffic to Google Finance?
4.) Some changes have been made to the blog posts. A lot of pages don't show blog posts. When blog posts do show, it's usually only for a day or so? What was the reason for changing this?
Again, thanks for doing this.
It's my pleasure. Thanks for the great questions. I'll respond in order:
1. Can you point us to the errors you are seeing for company profiles? Both Reuters and Google Finance are committed to accurate data and information and we will make sure any errors are addressed quickly. We do like the idea of allowing companies to edit themselves.
2. We also like the idea of adding RSS feeds for investor information. We hadn't thought of that so appreciate the suggestion!
3. Unfortunately, we can't comment on the traffic impact of the "plus box". Sorry!
4. We are continually working on ways to improve all of our search results including blog search results. If you don't see blog posts on a particular company page, that means our blog search crawl couldn't find any. If you think there are some great blogs out there that we are missing, please let us know.
Thanks again for the great questions!
Katie
In regards to the the Reuters profile information, I use it a lot as a jumping off point to visit companies' sites and to check that the information is correct. My firm does this as a service for companies. Common issues are links to wrong pages or error pages, and contact information that is old or incorrect. We don't keep track of the figures, but anecdotally I'd estimate that around one in 10 pages we review has an error of some kind. The best solution obviously is for Reuters to provide a way for companies to correct these problems (if they see them). Still, I'm sure <em>some</em&... companies would value the ability to get their information on the Google Finance page for their company. RSS, executive blog posts, YouTube video, spreadsheets etc.
Right now when viewing through the discussion threads, it would be nice to be able to customize how many discussions I can view on a single page (as opposed the standard 10), and perhaps would be beneficial for the higher moderated (5 star) discussions to be added on the right hand side. Thus, when trying to wade through all the threads that I've missed in a day, it would be easier for the user to focus on the discussions that were deemed more valuable by other users. I feel that narrowing the width of the original column displaying all the discussions, (offset by implementing more the option of viewing more discussions per page) along with the current chart + higher moderated discussions in a second column on the right hand side, would add significant value to the user experience.
Thanks,
Alex
a k a r p o @gmail.com
Great suggestions, thanks!
Thanks,
Katie
PS: Note to SeekingAlpha editors: what great users you have! Can we do this interview every week for user feedback? :)
First, I'd like to say congratulations on what you have accomplished so far with Google Finance. I would have to say that the site is one of the coolest/unique financial sites I know!
My question concerns programmatic access to data. Are there any plans in the future to create, for example, a webservice to allow access to historical stock information? I know that currently other financial sites have this type of service.
Thanks,
Mike
Thanks for the compliment. This is a feature we have considered. Stay tuned. :)
Best,
Katie
I would like to see the information we get in yahoo finance in the "key Statistics" and "Major Holders" link.
In both I would like to see information that is most up to date. Yahoo data seems to be months old.
I would also like to see from daily volume for any given stock, how much was sold short and how much was long and thus short interest for the day.
I love the news overlay on the graphs. I would now like to pair google notebook with google finance. I read news articles on the web and I may read that the new iPhone is out in June 2007. I want to create a note and I want to see my note on the Apple chart. In that note, I would like to link it to google calendar reminders. I want to set reminders. For example a reminder on 1st June 2007 which brings up my note.
I also want to be able to cross reference the notes across multiple charts. I know the iPhone launches in June and I know that company X is providing the graphics chip in the iphone. I then want to add the same note to the graph of company X. When my reminder triggers on June 1st, I get to see all the companys my notes cross referenced, what I thought of each and what price the company was trading at when i created the note.
I would also like to notifications when a company trades above a certain volume and or price. I would again like to create this on the charts my pointing and clicking on the price axis. An sms of the last sale at the triggered price will be excellent. I dont mind paying for the sms.
I look forward to more exciting innovation from Google.
Cheers
Harvit
Wow, all great suggestions. Want to come and work at Google? :)
Thanks!
Katie
I'm really happy you read my suggestions. I hope to see them or a derivative implemented.
I'd love to work for Google. I've been scratching my head about applying for a while now. I am a developer but dont have a lot of web development experience but I have a head full of ideas of what could be done across the Google platform. Is there an ideas department?
Cheers,
Harvit
Go to our Google Jobs website and see if something fits your needs and background. We do not have an ideas department. Ideas come from everywhere. :)
Thanks!
Katie
All of the suggestions in this thread are fantastic; I also use pretty much all of the Google products (both those listed above, and most of the rest) and Harvit's series of suggestions struck me as particularly fantastic. I would be careful, however, to make sure that such an integration of products is easily understood by a larger portion of the population in order to a) make Google's already fantastic tool-set that much more fantastic, by b) keeping the focus on the user, and not the features. The benefit of a tool set is in the people's ability not only to use them, but more fundamentally to know that they can use them for that purpose. This goes back a bit to my first post (to which, being as new to stocks as I am, I am just going to let pass so as to see what everyone else suggestions, some of whom have covered much of what I was talking about) - because I don't know how the tools on Google Finance can be beneficial to me, I might not use them as effectively as I otherwise might. There are quite a few insights here for us first-time Google Finance users. Is there a way to help make some of these insights more apparent on the Google Finance page. (Or, perhaps a user-defined "how I use Google products" page where all these wonderful suggestions, and more, could be put out there for the public to see, and expand upon?)
A few things for the features wish list that would really make Google finance so much more useful:
1. The ability to track options trading in the portfolio. And in a way so that if you have a position in the underlying position it will automatically be reflected in the cost basis and percentages. For instance, if I employ a covered call writing strategy, if the calls expire worthless, or I sell them at a profit, then a transaction is added so that it automatically adjusts my displayed cost basis for the underlying. Along the same lines, if I have sold a call, and the underlying price has moved above strike, the percentage profit displayed for the underlying should reflect the fact that I cannot taste that profit until the call is bought to close. Really, two columns would be appropriate - one reflecting the calculations as done now, and one reflecting the effect of whatever options strategy is currently being employed.
Right now, its a pain. When I sell a call, I manually decrease the cost per share in the original transaction (and increase the commission amount to reflect the cost), but there is no other notation that I have sold the call.
2. How about an email notification system that tells you when a dividend has been paid on one of your equities? Click a link, and it brings up your portfolio page and it offers to automatically add a transaction reflecting the dividend payment (and such transactions would naturally be reflected in the displayed cost basis).
3. Email notifications in general that are sent when user defined triggers are met. Target prices, reminders of earnings announcements, etc. Could be a useful ad delivery vehicle... I don't mind such things when they are in the context of something I actually requested.
4. Here's an easy one that would be super useful - have us a columns that shows us the percentage gain in annualized terms.
5. I can think of tons of other improvements that would make life easier. The charts, by the way are great. But it would be nice when you are dragging the chart begin and end dates, a little tag near the cursor would pop up that is dynamically updated and shows you the date to which you've dragged the bar... so many times I've wanted to see percentage change between two very specific dates.
5. Think about emulating the new yahoo chart methods for superimposing technical data.
6. Finally, give us REAL TIME DATA!!!
Thanks for a great service.
Cheers
1. We don't currently offer options pricing data on Google Finance but after this interview, we'll look at the possibility more closely.
2. Good idea. Would you like email alerts for all corporate actions: dividends, splits, upgrades, etc?
3. Another good idea. Which other kinds of alerts are important to you?
4. Sorry, could you clarify?
5. I will share this with Vivi, our chart engineer. Thanks for the suggestion!
5.5. We are looking into support for technical charts. Stay tuned!
6. Yep! We have been working with Nasdaq and NYSE on this and while they have agreed, it's now before the SEC for review and approval. We'll get it out to you as soon as we can.
Thanks!
Katie
First, I applaud you for taking questions this way. It is clear you understand what product management is really about.
Next I'll add that the readers here have posted some great questions and suggestions.
Now for my own...
I realize that supporting multiple browsers and resource profiles is difficult. However, it would be great if I could create multiple layout profiles and select the one I desire either through fingerprinting or explicitly by URL. The ability to tailor output for the device I happen to be carrying any given day would increase utility of the site immensely. Any plans for something like this?
While I second the notion of integration with online brokerages, one intermediate step would be the ability to (automatically) import portfolio information, do so on time or event triggers, and even a "push". While the inferred default portfolio is amusing (and alarming to one person I introduced to GF) if I could keep the content current it would be quite useful. (Hint: Yodlee)
Real-time data would be great as would real-time data for all major foreign exchanges.
Finally, I'll also second the enhanced option support and add expanded forex to my wish list. Does your roadmap extend into this area?
Thanks,
These are all really good insights, thanks. First, we work hard at supporting as many browsers and operating systems as possible. In fact, I just received an email from our QA team that outlined how we are doing supporting the various browsers and operating systems (answer: so far, so good!). That said, I do not think we have given your suggestion of fingerprinting too much thought so I will bring this back to the team.
Second, account aggregation and real-time syncing of portfolios is indeed a neat feature. Yodlee has worked hard at this and I agree it could be useful on Google Finance. We'll look into this further, too.
Lastly, we do support currencies! For example, here is the current exchange rate of the USD to the Euro. What other types of FX information is important to you?
Many thanks!
Katie
I like the Google Finance site especially the charts and the amount of information you provide when looking up quotes. However I find the Portfolio to be somewhat bare bones and not as effective in keeping track of my purchase information as MSN Money's stock portfolio on Moneycentral. Is there any plan to beef up Portfolio tp make the handling of purchase/sell transaction more effective as well as adding the ability to handle the foreign exchange rate component of purchasing a foreign currency stock.
Thanks
Thanks!
Katie
I was pondering ;
Google Finance is owned by Google, right?
Then how come your executives aren't shown properly here:
finance.google.com/fin...
(Please see this for better understanding )
picasaweb.google.com/D...
Although they're shown fine here:
www.google.com/corpora...
www.google.com/corpora...
After all, it is your company,
Can't you just upload the photos once again?
Thank you,
David Hetfield.
Ricky Pitts
aka, Gooby
Great idea, we'll do our best to make it so!
Thanks,
Katie
1. Fundamental information going back 10 years would help tremendously. More recent years can be broken down by quarter. Balance Sheet, P/L and Cashflow information should be made available, especially 10 year Sales, EPS, Equity, Cash, Return on Equity. (Right now, the only site that has this, in a limited way, is MSN Money)
2. Support for XBRL - and actual display of the 200+ companies that already report in xbrl would be top of list.
3. SMS notifications would actually be better for me than email notifications.
4. I want to get to know top management, their reputation, etc.
5. I would really want the ability to interface financial data into google spreadsheet via xbrl tags
Thanks for reaching out. More power to the product.
Marc
These are great suggestions. We have talked with the SEC a bit, actually, about the lack of universal support for XBRL. Last year, I recall them saying there were close to 25 companies using XBRL and this year there are only 50. This is disappointing as XBRL could be really useful to the financial community. We'll continue to keep an eye on this space.
Also, how would you quantify the "reputation" of an executive? For example, are you looking for ratings? Something more qualitative or quantitative?
Thanks again,
Katie
And congrats for this great interview. Clearly, you belong at Google.
I have just a couple of questions (OK, maybe three), some of which you've sort of discussed in response to other questions:
1) Please describe how you apportion your time in deciding where Google Finance should go, in terms of user requests, looking at the competition (that would seem to be mostly Yahoo Finance), and blue-sky brainstorming.
Also, do you have a feel for how the major players in the web finance information market stack up, market-share-wise? I get the sense that it's a fairly turbulent marketplace, with the big web powerhouses (Google and Yahoo), powerhouse wannabes (MSNBC, AOL, ...), narrowly focused web sites (Morningstar, BigCharts.com and others focused only on finance markets), and proprietary sources (brokerage houses, mutual fund companies, etc).
2) Can you describe the quality control/error correction process at Google Finance? In particular, how do things like NTDOY (Nintendo ADRs, traded in the OTC pink sheets marketplace), whose numbers seem stuck months back in the Google Finance data, get dealt with and how to the people looking at those pages find out what is happening in that area?
These are all good questions, particularly your first one. We have spent a lot of time trying to determine where we can make a difference in the online finance space. We focus first and foremost on the user. We have regular usability studies, visit various users in their homes and offices, study data and trends in finance, and read your feedback in emails and message boards to help determine where we can most add value. One of my favorite things about Google is that we have this great concept of "20% time" where engineers can spend 20% of their time doing something they are passionate about. Google Finance is fortunate to have several 20% engineers who help us think way outside of the box and experiment on new ideas. We're hoping to ship some of their ideas to you soon.
In the US and worldwide, Google continues to gain market share. Based on available independent information regarding search share, we are happy with our market position but are continuing to improve user experience in every market.
Lastly, data quality is of utmost importance to us. We are aware of the NTDOY issue and are working on it. We will get this resolved as quickly as possible.
Thanks!
Katie
Google is pretty much the benchmark for me.
Though I have to admit I think a Finance service is quite ambitious. This is more than just a page search engine or organising user content - financial information is entire industry on its own, a huge industry! You're either going to do this just to keep people on your site (like Y! does) or you're going to do this to provide a service for investors - which means competing with places like GlobeInvestor.com (or even GlobeInvestorGOLD.com) - and having high-quality comprehensive data and tools. Which is it going to be?
Also, there have been a lot of requests here, but there are even more in the Official Google Finance Group, especially on the Feature Requests page: groups.google.com/grou...
So many that someone has requested a feature to track the feature requests!!!
Are we wasting our time or do you actively monitor and make decisions based on the discussion on the Feature Request page (and the group in general)?
Is there any way the Feature Request page could become something like an interactive Roadmap? Where the users of Google Finance could actually see what developers of Google Finance think of and are doing with our suggestions?
Google Finance is a switchboard of information. You'll notice that unlike other online finance sites, we send users to original sources of information such as news and blogs. We'll continue to work on providing a great, free service and have no plans of making Google Finance a subscription based service.
As for feedback, we do read this feature requests page often -- I promise! It's an important way for us to keep pulse on the needs of our users so I encourage you to keep reaching us in this manner. As for the future roadmap, that's an interesting idea. I'll bring that back to the team.
Best,
Katie
Best,
Katie