Google Finance heads across the pond

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.

And now in Canada

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 5:08 PM

Posted by Dion Loy, Google Finance engineer

Today we're pulling the wraps off Google Finance Canada, a localized version of Google Finance tailored for Canadian investors. One of our top requests has been for localized market information, presented of course in a useful and accessible format. We think Google Finance Canada addresses this by presenting top news and company news from Canadian sources, economic data from the Bank of Canada, multi-currency portfolios, and Canadian equity and mutual fund data. The main Google.com search experience has also been improved with Canadian stock onebox results. But speaking as a Canadian, my favourite feature is the company search that prioritizes Canadian companies (no more typing in Canadian exchange prefixes!).

What makes this release extra-special for us is the fact that it was put together by a distributed team of full-time and 20-percent-time engineers. (All the Google engineers may devote 20 percent of his or her work time towards a project of their own choosing.) We're grateful to have had the contributions of 20-percent engineers from our Hyderabad, Kirkland, Montreal, Mountain View, and New York offices to make this launch possible.