Is Google Finance evidence of a Google Portal master plan? I think not. Google’s strategy is focused on creating pageviews in any way possible to satisfy a huge demand for targeted key word advertising.

Google Finance in particular fills that need because the financial industry is already one of Google’s most lucrative Adwords customers. In other words Google is simply following the money.

And by the way, despite some reviews to the contrary, Google Finance is another great breakout product. It delivers something other financial sites don’t … and that is simplicity. On launch, Google Finance packaged the features investors want without all the fluff, big images or even ads. Of course, ads will come but in the traditional non-intrusive Google style.

In some ways Google Finance will challenge Yahoo, MarketWatch and TheStreet.com but as a publisher myself, I actually see this benefiting its competitors. Google is a traffic monster that will cause millions of new humans to read and follow financial news. But these new pageviews will in large part be flowing through Google to sites like TheStreet.com which have talent like Jim Cramer writing articles. A good part of Google Finance is news aggregation … clicking on a stock provides links to news on that company. This is good news for any site writing financial news stories.

Traditional portals like Yahoo, AOL and Excite mostly link to content within their domain. Google is not so selfish. I’m sure Google will continue to create Google Portal type properties … like Google Health and Google Sports. However, by centering on automated algorithmic links to outside content from news publishers and bloggers Google is still more of a search engine than a true portal.

Just my opinion ….

Posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 2:57 pm. Permalink