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Google throws away 12 years of work by investors (Portfolios in Google Finance)
- lozaning 8y agoThis title seems clickbaity to me. Didn't the author lose about 5 minutes of work they did 12 years ago, and not the effort resulting from continual work over 12 years?
- jetrink 8y agoHe's referring to the collective work of everyone who created a portfolio during the feature's 12-year existence.
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoYes, but the author isn't the only user. There's millions of users in 12 years, their cumulative work is gone.
- giarc 8y agoYou're correct. Author added some stocks into their hypothetical portfolio and went back to check to see how it was doing. I wonder if Google sent emails to uses notifying them that the service was going to be discontinued.
- bacon_waffle 8y agoI had a portfolio there, just to see what the feature was about. There was a notification on the site a while back (months ago, can't remember exactly when), but I don't think they sent an email announcement.
- slededit 8y agoAt times I’m annoyed they don’t update it. But given the modern idea of “updating” is to remove functionality and add white space I’m thankful.
- captain_perl 8y ago"The author" is a millionaire early web pioneer whose opinion is at least as valuable as anybody else's, if not more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Greenspun
- pkaye 8y agoThat is the problem with depending on a third part service. Even if it was a company that you paid for the service, at some point they might not find it profitable and close down the service or company.
- Y_Y 8y agoFinance is just a pile of third-parties trusting each other in exchange for money.
- njarboe 8y agoOr business in general.
- dragonwriter 8y agoOr (generalizing money to utility) society in general.
- cortesoft 8y agoEvery single person and business relies on third parties. That is the way the world works. The key is always having a plan to replace a third party that is no longer providing the service you need.
- docker_up 8y agoIt is mind boggling to me that both Google and Yahoo have thrown away their finance sites. It's utter garbage. And on the phone, Google Finance is even worse. They don't even use the same site or the same behavior, even though I'm pointing to the same URL. It's insane. Why would they completely disregard finance? Are they really not able to make a profitable site using ads?
- rch 8y agoWhen did Yahoo have their own finance site? (most of it is provided by a third party, or was when I worked for said provider)
- thewizardofaus 8y agoYahoo finance has been around for a very long time!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ChristianBundy 8y agohttps://finance.yahoo.com/ https://finance.yahoo.com/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- astura 8y agoSince January 19, 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Finance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Finance
- chkdsk 8y agoYahoo finance was the original finance site where your parents used to look up stock quotes for Nokia and Pets.com during the original tech bubble.
- 8y ago
- rgbrenner 8y agoWas anyone really using this feature? Even the author sounds like he wasn't actively using the feature. He entered some data 6 years ago, and went back today to find it was missing.... He didn't even notice until almost a year after it was removed. Keeping every feature around, even the unused ones that look like failures, is a bad idea.
- tomohawk 8y agoRepeatedly destroying trust by dropping things and breaking things for people, is a bad idea.
- gboudrias 8y agoAt this point Google projects are basically less reliable than hobby projects.
- psergeant 8y agoBut hey, come build your company on top of GCP!
- stefano 8y agoFunny thing is, people are lining up to do just that. I think that's a symptom of an industry where following the hype is more important than long term stability.
- runeks 8y agoOr maybe they’ve carefully weighed their options, and concluded that e.g. Kubernetes on GCP works a lot better than on either AWS or Azure?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- taeric 8y ago
- whitedeveloper 8y agoThis is one of the best test comments ever. Its bigly.
- danielaxelsen 8y agoHi - I'm the creator of https://bravos.co https://bravos.co, a replacement for Google Finance. (I didn't have anything to do with this article being posted.) I actually left my job two months ago to work on this full-time... Google Finance used to be a "home page tab" for me and it was just killing me that I couldn't find a good alternative. Bravos.co features a clean interface for tracking public companies, cryptocurrencies, and even private companies. The platform pulls in news, social conversations, and key financial data, and has modern features like a "Dark Mode" and mobile site. APIs, native apps, notifications, and more are coming soon. We have a 2 minute video walkthrough here: https://youtu.be/gpQpCK9Ydl0 https://youtu.be/gpQpCK9Ydl0 We would love to get your thoughts - we want to build this based on community feedback.
- nsriv 8y agoThis looks wonderful, just signed up! Looking forward to APIs
- danielaxelsen 8y agoYeah - they're going to be really cool, fast, and useful.
- cloakedarbiter 8y agoI spent 10 minutes surfing around, and overall, I really like the layout, sparklines, and navigation. It looks like you're using Highcharts for the main graphs, and if they support transitions out-of-the-box, that'd be nice to have that turned on. For example, when zooming out from 1M to 1Y, it's a little tough to see the recent 1 month changes in the context of 1 year. The axis transitions just makes it a bit more distracting, without the line chart transitions between date ranges. Also, making the selected range saved to the URL to make the links shareable would be a good feature to add too. I see that it's built in React, but I'm curious why clicking on an individual stock appears to "leave" the app, not giving it quite as smooth of a single page app experience? Not a huge deal, just curious. Otherwise, this looks really great!
- 8y ago
- RickJWagner 8y agoQuick shout-out to the commenter who mentioned Boggleheads.org. If you're into finances, it's a great resource.
- reptation 8y agothat's bogleheads.org I take it?
- anotheramala 8y agoThis new website is doing a nice job: http://www.cmlviz.com/ http://www.cmlviz.com/
- lalos 8y agoAs long as Google reports 90% of the revenue from a single stream (Ads), anything else is a pet project that can be canceled or left to rot since there is no strong incentive to keep working on it. I try to back up whatever work I do on any Google service. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me -> Google graveyard for more info: https://www.lifewire.com/google-graveyard-products-1616198 https://www.lifewire.com/google-graveyard-products-1616198
- sbisker 8y agoThere's a caveat there; Google is very incentivized to keep around any service on which it can display those ads! Gmail isn't going away any time soon in large part for that reason.
- lalos 8y agoYes but there's another caveat there, I don't have that info. How do I know that Google Reader (remember it?) generates data that can be mined for their profit and how do I know it doesn't until they announce that they kill it? I know that mail and search are untouchable, was talking about the broader services.
- tonfa 8y agoDoes Gmail show ads? I had the impression that was not the case now.
- riku_iki 8y agoAnother question is if gmail content is source of targeting data.
- nvrspyx 8y agoThey have "Promotions" for Gmail, but you can disable them, although I don't think Google explicitly tells you that it's an option. Google also doesn't use your Gmail emails for ad targeting or tracking, as per this quote: > When you open Gmail, you'll see ads that were selected to show you the most useful and relevant ads. The process of selecting and showing personalized ads in Gmail is fully automated. These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you're signed into Google. We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads. from this page: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Soundest 8y agoTo be honest, this article just seems like a thinly veiled attempt to poke google because he doesn't like their political leanings. Frankly, I'd be surprised if any of the services I used today were still around 12 years from now, let alone waiting with my previously saved settings. If it was that important to you, you should have either used a paid service (hey, bloomberg exists for a reason) or stored the data locally at your own cost.
- i386 8y agoBzzt wrong. Leave your culture wars and burner account at the door please.
- arrty88 8y agoIts a shame Google/Yahoo finance couldnt pivot to become Robinhood. It was so close.
- steakknife 8y agoYou can now link your RH account (and many other brokers) directly to Yahoo Finance and trade and track your portfolio in real-time, so really it's even better than them becoming a broker.
- api 8y agoWelcome to the new age of not owning or controlling anything. Your work belongs to "the cloud," whatever that is, and can vanish at any time and without warning. You can't make a backup... or not one you can use at least.
- veronikakolejak 8y agoWe built https://wallmine.com/portfolios https://wallmine.com/portfolios that can import a Google Finance CSV. The stock search/screener can filter stocks listed on US, Canadian, and international exchanges. Happy to hear your thoughts.
- vortico 8y agoGoogle Finance was a free site if I remember. If a consumer expects a level of service without offering a payment, any pains the consumer has are entirely their fault. If it was a paid service however, the consumer should control (via a contract or terms of use) what will happen when something goes wrong. If anything, people should thank Google for offering their service free of charge.
- ant6n 8y agoI am paying Google for storage. Last year my credit card went bust and Google told me via e-mail I had 7 days to provide an alternate card, when payment failed. Before that time was up, Google cancelled my subscription unilaterally. They told me it's no problem, I just have to renew the subscription, except by then the cost of the subscription had gone up 8%. It was impossible for them to restore my previous subscription cost. As a paying consumer I expected a certain level of service, but I had not control over what was happening when something went wrong. When paying Google, you're not better off.
- vortico 8y agoAbsolutely, don't use a company as large as Google for your data services. An individual customer is not a significant income source, so they care less about their customers. But there are several services out there offering paid data services that do care, because their main income source is the customers, rather than advertisement and data collection companies.
- danso 8y ago> When we combine this with Google’s destruction of millions of person-years of (part-time) work in Picasa, is the only reasonable conclusion that Google has re-hired Marissa Mayer? Huh?
- nanoanderson 8y agoSeriously, what a nasty comment. Trying to think of what possible context they could put around this comment that would justify it.
- pm90 8y agoThe blog is full of much sexist bullshit comments everywhere. Incredibly, there seem to be people warning him about the exact same thing and he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention.
- jondubois 8y agoObviously you're not familiar with Marissa Mayer's work. I remember that before Mayer, Yahoo Mail was lightweight, fast and it displayed emails chronologically and in a well categorized way. After Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo, the Yahoo email client became slow and clunky and it grouped emails together in a strange way which made it hard to find stuff; thankfully I was able to figure out a way to disable this 'feature'. That's not even mentioning all the Yahoo Mail hacking scandals that happened on Mayer's watch. Also, the new Yahoo logo is bad.
- leoh 8y agoI'm not sure how you can hold Meyer directly responsible for the clunky Yahoo email client. This reads as incredibly sexist.
- jondubois 8y agoThe new Yahoo mail client was her incentive, it was all over the news and she was actively claiming credit for it. The worst part is that she was claiming that it was faster but all users felt that it was the opposite. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2012/12/11/marissa-mayer-announces-yahoo-mail-redesign-focused-on-speed-mobile/amp/ https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2012/12/11/m...
- arcticbull 8y agoI switched over to Yahoo Finance. Works pretty well, the UI especially on the phone leaves some to be desired but it gets the job done.
- HelloFellowDevs 8y agoI remember using Google Finance in one of my business classes in High School. I haven't checked on it since, but I didn't know that Google would kill something that was definitely promising.
- iscrewyou 8y agoI still miss Google Reader. I just wish they would somehow let community take over for the project. I don’t know how it would work but I just don’t see another way. I’ve moved everything off Google other than email and calendar.
- cdcfa78156ae5 8y agoThis is why Richard Stallman calls SaaS "Service as a Software Substitute" and recommends running your own programs on your own computers: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s... If you are using any Unix derivative there are still Free Software applications from the 1980s (or 1970s if you run BSD) that you are running every day without any problems, whether you realize it or not. Consider doing your financial modeling with a Free Software program like Gnumeric: http://gnumeric.org/ http://gnumeric.org/
- MarkMc 8y agoBut any replacement for Google Finance will require a pricing feed, so in this case you cannot get away from a 'service' model.
- HIPisTheAnswer 8y agoFor now, but soon our markets will be run completely p2p, and order books will be shared with whoever wants to see them for really cheap. And no breakage. Like I said before: this is good, the more saas are disrupted, the more we can focus on a real distributed OS.
- mattnewport 8y agoThe big tech companies seem to be doing a good job of proving Richard Stallman right about many things over the last few years. I've always been sympathetic to the ideals of the free software movement but for many years I thought they were being a bit paranoid and extremist. Increasingly I'm coming round to the idea that they were right all along.
- gscott 8y agoI was worried Google Wave would take over the CRM industry.
- cornflake 8y agoIn terms of actually understanding how a hypothetical portfolio would have performed, something that is much more meaningful then the overall ROI provided by Google Finance is the concept of the annualised return. We built our portfolio functionality with this in mind to empower investors to understand their true returns, respective of time. It often amazes users here at Australia's #1 stockmarket app, disclosure: I founded and bootstrapped the business and it's iOS/Android only at the moment. Refer: https://stocklight.com/faq https://stocklight.com/faq
- nradov 8y agoWhy do you consider annualized return more meaningful than alpha or Sharpe ratio?
- OldHand2018 8y agoI understand that the purpose of this blog post is to discuss the collective loss by the general public of access to this type of feature, but... This dude's employer has access to data and tools that were never available on Google or Yahoo. All he needs to do is walk over to the business school and ask someone in the computer lab for help creating a mock portfolio of stocks and tracking performance over time.
- xte 8y agoUse cloud stuff? Witch means use someone else computers? That's an example results. In the past few people design Multics/Plan9 with a concept: a network OS, but with our desktop at the center of the universe, simply because we work there, our data are there etc. The network simply work as a helper, cache, horsepower etc, no more.
- MarkMc 8y agoThe stocks that someone puts in a portfolio can be useful in targeting advertising to that person. I'm surprised that Google decided this benefit was less valuable than the ongoing cost of maintaining the Google Finance website. Perhaps the problem is that that noone at Google wants to do the boring work of maintaining what is essentially a CRUD application.
- wonder_bread 8y agoStockrow.com
- rcar1046 8y agoI created a Google Finance replacement – https://stockdaddy.io https://stockdaddy.io – in my spare time. This can track your investments and returns including dividends for stocks and ETFs (real-time) and mutual funds (EOD). It’s basically a pure portfolio tracker without much of the frills of a full finance site. It's meant to be a solid performance tracker and good full screen layout to glance at throughout the day.
- BareNakedCoder 8y agoI get different looking 5-year charts for symbol HYG when I look on stockdaddy.io and finance.yahoo.com. Where do you get your data?
- rcar1046 8y agoIEX whom I would say for the most part is very reliable, although I would only base actual trades off of your brokerage’s data and leave other sources like Yahoo and Stockdaddy for real-time portfolio tracking.
- yanneves 8y agoAny other disgruntled investors, I'd recommend ShareSight (not my company). Generous free service.
- tinkerteller 8y agoI would love to know internal story behind the disaster that Google Finance has become. I'm not against new designs and evolving but the new website misses out on one simple thing: People using this site loves numbers, they want numbers! "Minimal & dumbed down" doesn't work with investor types. My guess is that they got new VP and the moron decided to wield his steve-jobs-me-too minimal everything stick. The guy has to be wearing turtleneck every day in the office and probably got big bonus for driving this trainwreck to its conclusion.
- nikolay 8y agoStay away from Google products and services! With all their stringent to the ridiculousness level hiring, they seem to hire calculators, not humans in the negative sense. They don't get families either - I haven't seen their diversity numbers, but maybe they are predominantly a bachelors' company, yet, they try to design products for families. For example, I am the family manager of our Google Play store account. Now, after the clowns come up with Google One, which for whatever reason needs a massive migration, so, after six months I'm still not in. Well, guess what, they invited my son and my wife to One, but not me, you know, the family manager. Well, my son created his One account, and my wife's old Storage account got converted to One, and suddenly, she became the Google One manager. See, one family, two managers. And this cannot be undone. So, if they had a single family man in this circus, he or she would have influenced the product design, and deliver something that doesn't lead into double charges, countless calls with customer support, and most importantly - customer frustration. At the same time, Microsoft gets it. Amazon gets families, too, and Facebook and Google don't. I had similar experiences with the bachelor demographic of Facebook's in Product Design. Anyway, back to the original point - Google doesn't get social dynamics, as they don't get regular people in general. Most importantly, with all their computer scientists, they don't seem to realize that by abusing us repeatedly, they make sure we don't bother to use their future products and services. They recently killed Inbox, but, honestly, that was a belated decision - they had to kill it a second after it was launched as a completely idiotic product! Sometimes I wonder what kind of people work on their products! They are way too full of themselves and live in their twisted reality. That's why I would never respond to their recruiter emails and calls! Google and Facebook are the last place on Earth I'd go! And the ex-Googler title means nothing nowadays anyway. I repeat, keep off Google! Short their stock!