Google Data

Posted by Tianpeng Jin, Software Engineer

One of the most popular features on Google Finance is our charts. In fact, we like them so much we thought they’d benefit from being bigger. So today we launched a new feature on our individual stock and market charts: the ability to expand them to fill the page and allow for further refinement.

Here are our top tips & tricks for using Google Finance charts, including a few longstanding ones you may not have seen before.

1) Big charts (NEW)

To expand a stock chart, click the arrow button in the upper-right corner. Voilà! The chart fills the page, making it easier than ever to see and manipulate. If you want to collapse it, just click the arrow button again. 

Before:

 

After:

2) Customize your chart view in ‘Settings’ 

You can change the content of the charts to include or exclude news flags, dividends, splits, volume, and after hours trading data by clicking on the ‘Settings’ tab under the chart. From this panel, you can also change the scale from linear to logarithmic and change the default zoom for your charts. Also on the Settings tab, you can switch your charts to a variety of types. Instead of a line graph, you can opt to view candlestick or OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close) charts. 

3) Plot custom news feeds on your charts 

Using the ‘Plot Feeds’ tab, you can customize the news annotations on your chart to come from a favorite RSS feed or news source. Simply click the tab, enter the Feed Address, and click Plot Feeds. Here you can see I’m tracking The Apple Blog.

4) Let’s get technical 

The ‘Technicals’ tab allows you to add a variety of technical data to your charts for more advanced tracking. Available technicals range from Simple and Exponential Moving Averages to KDJ Indicators and Bollinger Bands, among many more. You can set up as many technical data series’ to your charts as you like and view up to six at a time.

Try these tips out and let us know what you think or submit your suggestions for Google Finance on our Product Ideas page. Stay tuned for more as we keep building out Google Finance.

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

Posted by Laura Hughes, Consumer OperationsHave you ever had an idea for Google Finance? We want to hear it! Today we’re opening up our very own Product Ideas page.The Google Finance team looks to our users for feedback and ideas. Knowing what you ca…

Posted by Philip Brittan, Director of Product Management
Buy! Sell! Hold! That’s stock trading 101. But sometimes investing isn’t as simple as just buying or selling shares of a stock or mutual funds. More sophisticated stock watchers also want t…

Feed content is being constantly distributed via new channels and endpoints every day.   More and more, these new channels involve sharing your content in social networks and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz.Recently, we laun…

Posted by Garrett Wu, Software Engineer

Since I’ve been working on Google Reader, I’ve told a lot of my friends about how great it is. And while some of them try Reader and find it really useful, many of them aren’t interested in taking the time to get Reader set up. That’s why today, I’m happy to announce an experimental product from the Google Reader team that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone, while giving Reader users a new way to view their feeds. It’s called Google Reader Play, and it’s a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web that’s easy to use and personalized to the things you like. Best of all, there’s no set-up required: visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try.

In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you’ve read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

Reader Play adapts to your tastes — as you browse, you can let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the “like” button, and we’ll use that info to show you more items we think you’ll like. If you want, you can also choose categories, and we’ll personalize your stream to only show you stuff from those categories. And you don’t even need a Google account to use Reader Play. Of course, if you want to star, like, or share items, we’ll ask you to sign in to your Google account. Since Reader and Reader Play share the same infrastructure, any actions you take in one will be reflected in the other.

You might be wondering where we find all the awesome stuff in Reader Play. It uses the same technology as the Recommended Items feed in Reader to identify and aggregate the most interesting items on the web. If you sign in, Reader Play will also be personalized with items that people you’re following have shared in Google Reader, and items similar to ones you’ve previously liked, starred, or shared.

Since Reader Play is an experiment, it’s launching in Google Labs for now. To be clear, Reader Play isn’t intended to replace Google Reader: both Google Reader and Reader Play are about finding and reading interesting stuff online. In essense, Reader Play is a different view of Reader. It’s designed to be a fun and easy way to browse interesting items, while Reader is a highly customizable way to organize your feeds, keep track of what you’ve read, and much more. In Reader, you can switch to this view by clicking “View in Reader Play” from the feed settings menu.

Try Reader Play today and let us know what you think. Send us feedback in our forum or on Twitter, and check out our help article for more info.