When writing a story that revolves around stock prices, I prefer to wait until the market’s closed – don’t want the story reversing itself as I type, after all. I’ve found that market updates from Google (and Yahoo and MSN) are a little slow, though, and for this, we can blame the Securities and Exchange Commission.
One month ago, Google Finance gained the ability to receive real-time quotes from China, and the company’s Katie Jacobs Stanton wrote, “Now that the Chinese stock data is live, we’re hoping our friends at the SEC will take note and approve the last sale proposal we announced in January. This proposal would allow us to offer our users free and unlimited access to real-time last sale prices for NYSE and Nasdaq stocks. As soon as the SEC approves, we’ll flip the switch.”
Unfortunately, there’s been no approval, and thus no switch-flipping. In a more recent interview with Reuters, Stanton remarked, “You can get real-time sports scores, weather, news, but you still can’t easily get real-time stock market data. We should have had this ages ago.” And indeed, although it’s great to hear how well the Celtics are doing, people should probably be more worried about whether or not they’ll be able to retire on time.
There’s no clear (or even hazy) indicator of when the SEC might choose to rule on the January proposal; apparently an earlier suggestion has clogged up the bureaucratic pipes. But if this story stays in the press – and the move from the Official Google Blog to Reuters is a good start – Google, Yahoo, and MSN will hopefully get much more timely stock quotes.
