Google just (and I mean just launched Google Finance. Finance is barely a search engine, focusing far more on content, namely stock market stats and aggregated information.
The Finance page for a company contains a Flash (not AJAX! The horror!) stock chart, where you can drag a slider to select date ranges and run the mouse over to see instantly changing stats. There are news articles to the right of the chart, and they are based on the date range, changing when the range changes and being mapped out, Google Maps style, on the chart.
Above the chart is lots of basic numbers. Below it are company facts (profit, revenues, address and phone number), a Reuters company summary, excerpts from financial reports, a management list, related companies, links to other financial sites, blog posts from Blog Search and Google Group posts. Rolling over management names reveals an AJAX (whew!) popout that has a photo and links to the person’s bio, compensation and stock sales.
You can add any stock to your “portfolio”, which means you see headlines and quotes on the Finance homepage. You can also go to your portfolio page, enter how many shares you own and what you paid for them, and track your earnings (or losses). Yeah, how many people are giving up their stock portfolios to Google? God, they really are obsessed with getting your information.
Google also released version 1.0.1.0 of the Google Video Player. It includes clickable preview frames, optimizations, proper menu shortcuts, improved login, fixed audio stuttering, better error handling and a more polished GUI.
(via Digg)
Google Video now has a full-length indie flick for $14.99, or $1.99 for a day pass. Increase the day pass by a few days, drop the buy option to $10-12, and you’ve hit the perfect spot for movie downloads.
Turns out AdWords has been adding some great features I never noticed, including ad keyword popularity graphs, generating keywords based on your content pages, global traffic trends in search volume (for the last twelve months, including the peak season).
There’s a cool bookmarklet for adding bookmarks to your Google Account.
Follow this guide to make red/blue 3D images, for use with 3D goggles. Why am I mentioning this? Because a Digger used this method to create 3D Google Earth landscapes. Nice!
AdSenseBlackList.com has a generator that gives you a list of sites you should be blacklisting for AdSense, so called MFA sites. MFA is the popular acronym for “Made For AdSense” sites that provide zero content of any use, and buy really cheap AdSense ads to get people to visit.
(via Digg)
Turns out Adam Bosworth is working at something called Google Health, probably designed to target the health care industry. They stole my idea! I told some people at Search Champs that MSN should start a search engine to work through the clutter and provide accurate, up-to-date medical information. The elderly could use it to find the prescription drug plan that would be right for them, an impossibility in the current industry. The site could make money through comissions from mega-billions drug companies, instead of advertising (or both). I hope, for the sake of all the confused folks out there, that it is what Google is up to.
(via Digg)
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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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