Google Search: Finance revamp kills off Portfolios, adds hot stocks Follow button
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Google has freshened up the look and feel of its finance stock tracker and integrated it with Google Search on the web for desktop and mobile.
The new-look Google Finance will be accessible from a new Finance tab alongside News and Images in the main Search page, though it still can be seen at its existing location of google.com/finance.
Google Finance was looking dated and rather neglected as other products such as News got revamped. The product launched in beta in 2006 and remained in that state until 2009, and hasn't changed much in look and feel since. The site still has a link to the Google Finance blog that it stopped updating in 2012.
It appears Google thought the stock tracker in its current state was too niche. The Google Finance team quietly informed users in September that it was killing off its Portfolios feature by mid-November as part of renovation work aimed at making Finance more appealing to a "wider audience".
It gave users the option to download portfolio data until then. The feature allowed users to create a custom bundle of stocks to track.
Users will no longer be able to download their portfolio and historical tables once it's fully deprecated. However, they will still be able to view stocks in their portfolio through the new Your Stocks view. Users can also get notifications when there are notable changes to these stocks.
Along with Your Stocks, the new Finance tab also offers Market Summary, Local Markets, and World Markets views. Users can scroll to these areas on the page or jump to them via their respective tabs within the Finance page.
Google has also introduced a new 'follow' button that's displayed under recently searched topics, such as a particular index. It will also offer recommendations of what to follow based on "your interests, related news, market indices, and currencies".
As Ars Technica noted, the new Google Finance has also removed the need for Flash to be installed to display graphs. This move makes sense given that all mainstream browser makers now block Flash by default.
The new-look site isn't live in all regions yet, and Google doesn't say when it will be rolling out globally, but the company is interested in feedback. Until it does roll out, users can see what Google has in store in a GIF it posted on its main blog.
You will still be able to view a portfolio through the new Your Stocks view and get notifications of notable changes.
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