Re: Google Finance is turning into Abandonware

[Matt Kohls]

I know what you mean. This is my favorite and nothing is being updated.

On Thursday, May 2, 2013 8:41:40 PM UTC-5, Murat Sean wrote:

I've been using Google Finance since 2010. In the first year, till late 2011 I saw many improvements such the trends feature, an interface change, and my favorite, Portfolio Performance. However, since the official closure of the Google Finance blog (http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/) in summer of 2012 there really hasn't been any major (or even minor) updates or attempts to fix major bugs. The only thing added since then that I know of are three foreign exchanges.

 

A bug that seems to affect everyone is the non-functioning of the portfolio performance plot after the portfolio reaches a threshold on the number of transactions in it (my guess is ~60-75).  This is a feauture I have grown to love, and unfortunately it does not work for me anymore as my primary portfolio documentating all of my trades will not display even after attempting across multiple browsers and computers. However, if start a new porfolio with only a few transactions it works like a charm.

 

I realize Google Finance is free software, so I should expect some bugs. However, almost all Google services are free to the general public and are usually the among the best (if not THE best) on the internet. I have come to expect the best from Google. I assume Google does make some sort of money from targeted advertising of the Financial/Investor crowd that is most likely making above the average income of the general internet user.

My question is whether Google Finance is going to be around much longer? Lack of updates usually precedes a shutdown of services, and though I hate to do it I've begun migrating to Yahoo Finance even though I do not like the their interface as much as Google's. In addition, Yahoo Finance has an app for iOS that I can use, and Google Finance does not (only available for android). I am not endorsing Yahoo Finance but am just using it as an example of a free service that has improved significantly in recent years.

 

I mean no disrespect to the Google Finance team, as I am sure they are intelligent hard working people. They may be working on a big update, or on some behind the scenes stuff. But, as a user of Google finance it just hasn't been communicated to me on what they are actually doing to keep me around.

 

 

 

 

 

[Boyd Kelly]

FYI:  The Google finance app even for Android is total abandonware.  You're not missing anything at all!  

I don't know what happened to interest in financial data portals in the last few years.  In my opinion they all have serious deficiencies(even the likes of wikinvest and vuru), and no one seems to want to jump in and step up to the plate. You would think it would not be difficult to monetize this, especially with the brains of Google, however its clear that Google finance is certainly on a downward spiral.

[JK]

Speaking of interest in financial data portals, I noticed MSN canada recently announced is doing away with their portfolio manager.

http://ca.moneycentral.msn.com/investor/portfolio-manager/portfolio.aspx

Supposedly to replace it with something better but no data from previous system is going to be saved. :(

http://money.ca.msn.com/investing/insight/msn-money-investing-portfolio-tools-to-be-retired-on-or-after-may-27-2013-1

The US version does not have any notes about it going away. I have had to use the Canadian version as is formatted correctly in the browser while the US version squeezes everything into a tiny fixed width frame.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/stock_portfolio

[JK]

To anyone considering migrating to Yahoo Finance, last I checked the newest version only supports showing 200 or so symbols in your portfolio so if you have a large portfolio beware.

[Benny]

+1

[VesNL]

Really have to look for good third party applications. Google missed a chance here to be the leader in this app category. 

[Phantum]

Yahoo finance may have a few limitations but they are easy to work around. If you experience any problems they have excellent customer support and will respond within a few days to any bugs or problems.  You can access Yahoo stock quotes and your portfolio data in other programs using their web query.

Google finance has indeed been abandoned, it is not just about no new developments, but they are gradually phasing out providing the finance data it seems.  Although they denied it when I posted similar a year ago saying they were looking into issues, but not one of the serious data errors they said they would look into has been addressed.   For example, there have been no daily volumes shown on the ASX (Australia) or NZE for a year now (although shown for other time periods), surely a key technical indicator, but google have decided not to provide this now.  There are long standing problems in portfolios, even when exported and imported again using googles own tools.  Dividend reporting is erratic, some companies missing dividends or incorrect amounts and some large companies (eg ASX:TLS) showing 2 or 3 repeated dividends over a week.  These and several other issues have been acknowledged on these forums by google finance, but other than looking into them not one of the issues I tracked has been fixed now I check back.

If you want a good android app based on Yahoo data then I recomend Stock Quote (Bishinews).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.stock

Give up on google finance now, google already have ;-)

[OD]

agreed, I dont think they realised that people who go through the trouble of creating portfolios, spend a fair amount of time looking at it during the day/week ...so if they let this one go....we'll spend time else where, outside google's world...

cheers,

[Douglas Roberts]

Google Finance's portfolio performance charts are completely broken now, and have been for a couple of weeks.  Good thing I don't rely on Google for anything...

Yahoo's portfolio tracking system has gotten quite a bit better since I last looked at it a year or so ago.  That's what I'm using now.