superpower - 5:53 am on Mar 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

I'm a heavy user of Yahoo Finance and it looks like I will continue to be over at Yahoo. I was expecting something rivalling YF (or better). Looks like they decided to just put up a placeholder.

I'll explain:

1. The UI is lousy on the front page, a D-, and it is slightly better but still a C- on the stock pages. The front page is utterly useless except news related to the symbols I looked up. The main news column is the same or very close to what is "business" in G news.

2. Total lack of features. Where do I access my stock portfolio? There is a tab on the front page of Yahoo. I use this tracking feature all the time. Do I get stock symbol portfolios on GMoney?

3. What G calls "More Resources" (normally the most useful stuff) are at the bottom of the stock page (below the fold on my laptop), and they just send me off to all the other finance portals. Well hmm..

4. Too much of GMoney (ie all "More Resources") goes off to other sites. I don't like that, the inconsistency is annoying and unprofessional. Why would I go to G Finance then if all they have is a quote and some links to send me somewhere else? For example, I like to look up option contracts for the underlying security. On YF I am still on their site with the familiar navigation and consistency. I may go from there to click on the nav bar to look at my portfolio. With GMoney I'm offsite in some weird thing, no portfolio. There is no option chain on G.

5. The FLASH/AJAX chart is the one innovative item but it takes up the whole screen. It should be the kind of thing where you click off to a news-time-series section if you are interested. Or some other style of UI. I just don't find that compelling as the main headline feature of the stock page.

6. How do I look up mutual funds by group or browse by investing style? or fund family? Where are the prospectuses? Top performers? Any editorials? Currencies, bond/loan/mortgage rates?

7. Where is the technical analysis? Where do I run filters to screen stocks? I thought these high powered alpha geeks could give me some numbers, graphs, algos to play with. Chart comparisons? They send me off to Yahoo.

Verdict: F. If this was one guy I would give it a D+ (the plus for effort). An F is well-justified given this company's resources and hype. Here is another example of poor execution.

How can Google produce such crud with billions of dollars and thousands of employees on hand?