Google Finance

I suppose the big news of the day (other than Helen Thomas bitch-slapping President Bush) was the release of Google Finance.

I took this baby out for a joy-ride and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't that impressed. The site itself looks very rudimentry in nature, though the site is still in Beta. (Quick tangent: is it just me, or does Google stink when it comes to UI?)

One thing that I do like about Google Finance is the fact that it does relate to all information with regard to a paticular stock. For example, YHOO's finance page only displays mainstream news results when you are looking up information about a website. However, on Google Finance, it will also serve you with results from "less-than-mainstream" sites (read: blogs).

John Battelle had the following to say about Google Finance in his blog today:

"This marks a rolling shift at Google - the company is getting into publishing, whether or not it wants to admit it. The product manager, Katie Jacobs Stanton, admitted as much when we spoke - Google Finance will have a Groups section where stocks are discussed with paid moderators - that's editors to you and me. And that's a shift, a shift that is worth noting. "