Harnessing yet another data category to its search-engine prowess, Google is introducing a financial information service intended to compete directly with offerings from Microsoft, Yahoo and other sources, Google executives said on Monday.
Google said the service, at www.finance.google.com, would distinguish itself by providing stock charts with interactive qualities like those on its Google Maps service, allowing users to find deeper or specified layers of data by sliding the cursor.
The site will focus on current and historical data for both public and private companies, and following a Google practice for its new offerings, it will not immediately carry advertisements.
"Our focus is on the user and the product," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president for search products and user experience.
She said the company would consider revenue possibilities later.
Google said the initiative grew out of a survey it conducted 15 months ago, asking its users what kinds of new services they would find helpful. The response was dominated by two themes, maps and finance.
Financial analysts said the service plays to Google's strengths.
"Financial information is a category of information that can lend itself fairly well to the task of organizing and presenting, what Google is really good at," said Safa Rashtchy, a financial analyst at Piper Jaffray, an investment firm.
At the same time, Google faces a challenge in entering the extremely competitive consumer market for financial information against rivals like Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, and financial companies like Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab.
Like many of its competitors, Google will purchase financial information and data from third parties, including Hoover's, Interactive Data, Reuters and Morningstar.
But Katie Jacobs Stanton, a senior product manager, said Google had taken advantage of its Web database to add material, like executives' photos culled from corporate Web sites.
"We wanted to make it easier for our users to query by a company name or a chief executive," she said.
The new service, developed by an engineering team split between India and the US, makes extensive use of Google News, a service that tracks more than 4,500 Web news sites.
One feature the company emphasized was the ability to track when news stories appeared along a timeline display of stock prices. It will also link to discussions on Web logs about specific companies.
The service will offer its own bulletin-board discussions on financial topics. The boards will be moderated by a new group of Google employees hired to ensure the quality of the discussions, Stanton said.
Currently, Google directs those who look up stock ticker symbols on its site to four financial information Web services. The firm said it would continue to offer that option.
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