Google Launches Financial Information Service - Going Beyond the First Page
(Page 3 of 4 )
One of the resources listed was a discussion group in Google Finance. I clicked that link, half-expecting to be taken to a bulletin board. Instead, I got a link to a thread with the topic of "Long term view on IBM stock." While there was only one message in the discussion, it was more efficient than going to the board.
I noticed, though, that the search box at the top of this page gave me the option of searching discussions or searching finance. So, for the heck of it, I decided to run a search on Intel. Surprisingly, this didn't match any documents! Hmmm. I tried again with Apple. Again, it didn't match. It took me a moment to realize the search was limiting itself to the IBM thread. I went back to Google Finance, conjured a page for Apple, and then looked for the discussion group resource in the same place as I had found it for IBM. To my surprise, it wasn't there. Instead, right under the blogs, there was another box, labeled "Discussions," with links to several ongoing discussions about Apple. There must have been about 25 of them. I guess Apple investors are much chattier than IBM investors!
The discussion group is in Google Groups. While many if not most of the forums on Google Groups are unmoderated, the groups in Google Finance do feature moderators. Their job is to keep the discussions spam- and flame-free. Google already has a list of rules for its finance community, accessible from Google Finance's FAQ.
Getting back to my investigations, I clicked on the link to go back to Google Finance while I decided what to do next. To my surprise, I wasn't presented with the same Google Finance home page I saw when I started. This one was in a two-column format. The first column looked the same as what I saw before. The second column included recent stock quotes for both Apple and IBM, as well as links to news stories about both companies.
Next: How About a Portfolio? >>
More Search Engine News Articles
More By Terri Wells
/ 8 
