Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 7:15 AM
Posted by Nick Fey, Google Finance designer
Being a British bloke I am particularly pleased to announce the launch of Google Finance in the UK (http://finance.google.co.uk). Now it's easier for us Brits to get our own European public and private company information as well as UK mutual fund data. In addition you can find GBP currency quotes on the home page, so we can feel smug about how much cheaper everything will be when we visit the U.S. The local UK business news will give you the latest information about the European markets and we will be improving the relevance of stories and speed of news delivery even more over the coming months.
This UK launch is the second in a series of local versions of the Google Finance site, following Google Finance Canada, which launched last summer. We have received many requests to bring this service to other countries around the world, and will be working to do that this year. Kudos to the small crew of engineers on the Finance site who have managed to do this as well as build some great new features that we will be rolling out in 2008.
Please feel free to leave comments on this blog or send us email through the Help Center requesting new features. While we can't respond to them all individually, don't feel that they are being ignored; your feedback has a huge impact on how we prioritize our work.
To all my china plates back in the UK -- enjoy.
22 comments:
That's great news, I've been jealously eyeing the US version for some time! Thanks!
All very well, but let's say I bought some Apple stock as a UK resident. The wonderful all-dancing Google Finance UK site doesn't allow me to input the purchase price in pounds! How is it Google has "overlooked" this feature so intrinsic to a UK finance site?
That's great! But I wish Google would finish one country before they moved on the next one. A Canadian version exists, but we still don't get dividend information - and you don't for the UK either!!!
"Please feel free to leave comments on this blog "
I've posted it before but I'll put a comment on every blog posting until we get it if I have to...
I use google finance as my main research tool, but I really need to be able to track *my* dividend payouts before I can use google finance to track my portfolio. I would love it to calculate the payouts based on ex-dividend dates and the transactions I have recorded to determine total return.
However, you don't even have a "misc" or "cash" type of transaction where I can manually add in that I received a bunch of cash from a stock.
I'm looking forward to see the announce of "Google Finance in Spain".
Good news. Top priority now should be past and present dividend information - without that my first stop for information is always going to be elsewhere.
Hi Raveem,
Thanks for your feedback.
The price is based on the exchange where the stock is listed (and where you bought it). This makes it easier to track the price of the stock over time. The entire value of the portfolio is converted to your default currency (in this case it will be pounds) in the summary. The default currency can be changed per portfolio.
Hope this clarifies the isssue.
Ayan
Google Finance Team
Country specific sites are always welcome..i wait to see one for India very soon..with one of the largest number of retail investors, I hope Google does not ignore it for long
Google Financial Team, please.
Brazil needs to be next country. I love the tool. But it need to have all the Brazilian companies from Bovespa, not only the ones in the international market. Meanwhile I have to use crap Yahoo tools.
Cheers
Nick, congrats on making the leap to London. I must say I just discovered google blogs and am thrilled to have my voice heard as a long time yahoo! Finance user and one who'd like to migrate to google finance. I tried the app the day it was rolled out some 2 years ago and quickly gave up when I could not track my money market fund investments within the portfolio function. Has this been resolved? Its the details in finance that make or break you... I know its hard for googlers to get that aspect of investing with your recent tear, but this frankly, prevented me from parting ways with yahoo. Love your products and work, in general. Kevin
What am I missing is the ability to download stock data.
I have an idea for you guys: why don't you sponsor/support the OpenTick project? It is a free service where you can download stock data. I think that could be a nice addition to your service.
When will the ability to graph portfolios against each other be implemented?
Why has Google removed smaller independent financial blogs from the "BLOG POSTS" section? I have emailed Google three times for an explanation and have no waited over 3 weeks for a response. What kind of corporation doesn't respond to customer complaints?
Boy, people are so demanding! My suggestion should be really easy to do.
I'd like to be able to switch between the different Google Finance country homepages, perhaps via a drop-down menu at the top of the screen. Kinda like Google News does.
Y!Finance does this at the bottom of their homepage with text links, but that sucks because it's at the bottom of the page.
However, beyond the homepage from what I can tell there really is no difference between the country sites. For example, if I'm researching BP plc, the information I get on the .com domain for the LON:BP and NYSE:BP is the same as that on the .co.uk domain. At least I hope it is, otherwise I'm going to get thoroughly confused.
Also, would you mind explaining in a blog post how RSS feeds are selected for inclusion in the Blog Posts box? I thought it was based on the search phrase in the "more blog posts" links. But on OTC:BASFY, the company's RSS feed is being included but its posts don't include the blog search phrase, which is "BASF+AG". The company uses BASF *SE* now and doesn't include their OTC ticker or the phrase "BASF+AG" anywhere in their text or feed source code. So how are they getting their feeds indexed and included in the box?
And BTW, it is excellent that BASFY's corporate releases are included in the blog posts box because their news releases are not otherwise available to US investors, unless they go directly to the company's website. They're not on YF not AOLM&F and not on MSNMoney, simply because they now trade OTC. But since Google Finance has the blog posts box, BASFY is able to get its releases to us via RSS. This would be very handy for other company's in the same position as them.
works ok for equities but funds seem to be priced incorrectly. They seem to be priced in pounds not in pence. Hence portfolio information is incorrect.
where is finance.google.in?
i love your historical data - can not find in on the US site - want month to month ending prices on some US stock to download to a spreadsheet - how can i get that?
don
The UK mutual fund prices dont work correctly, they are all out by a factor of either 10 or 100.
As both Dave and billytkid have mentioned the pricing of UK funds is incorrect.
The prices are shown in pounds rather than pence as they are with individual shares and this leads to the portfolio calculations being incorrect.
Say I add into my portfolio 1000 fund units at a purchase price of 1.00(£), and the market price is now 2.00(£). The portfolio displays the total cost of purchase as £10, and the current value as £20, whereas the real values are £1000 and £2000.
The percentage gain calculated is therefore correct, but the monetary value is a 100x lower than it should be.
Either fund units need to show in pence, probably the best solution as it will match up with individual shares.
Or, the calculations on the portfolio need to be changed to compensate for the different currency denomination used.
I hope this can be corrected as it does detract a lot from the usefulness of the portfolio is you have investments in funds.
Knock, knock Google Finance team ...
Like so many bloggers have asked before ... when will the valuation of UK mutual funds be corrected ? It's off by a factor of 100 (due to pound vs pence conversation issue).
Can't see this as a very demanding fix ... could you provide an indicative date when this problem is likely to be fixed?
Thanks for those who have commented on the mismatch between pence and pounds. At least now I know it is not me doing something wrong!
Valuations are in pounds, whereas you enter transactions in pence. Therefore, you get an error factor of 100.
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