Official Google Blog
We’re very excited to tell you that real-time quotes on NASDAQ securities are now available on Google Finance. This is an important (and way overdue) development for everyone who consumes financial information. Historically, real-time stock data was not freely and widely accessible. Either buried behind subscription walls or brokerage sites, consumers typically had to live with 15 or 20 minute price delays. In the world of finance, time is indeed money, and it’s critical to have timely and accurate data.

This is decidedly non-evil.  But don’t let the information go to your head!  Day trading  will kill you with the commission fees.

At Google, we get excited about making all kinds of information accessible to everyone. The more up-to-date the information, the more valuable it is. This is particularly true in the world of finance; information, and timing of that information, is money. Today, real-time quotes are not freely and easily available on the web. Some websites offer one real-time quote at a time, but typically only after you have enrolled in a service and/or signed a complicated legal agreement. Other sites approach the problem differently and show you streaming delayed data, but that doesn’t solve the problem either — it masks it. What’s really important is getting free, easy and fast access to real-time quotes so you know how the market or your company is doing now, not as of twenty minutes ago.

As a result, we’ve worked with the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and our D.C. trade association, NetCoalition, to find a way to bring stock data to Google users in a way that benefits users and is practical for all parties. We have encouraged the SEC to ensure that this data can be made available to our users at fair and reasonable rates, and applaud their recent efforts to review this issue. Today, the NYSE has moved the issue a great step forward with a proposal to the SEC which if approved, would allow you to see real-time, last-sale prices across all Google properties including Google Finance, Personalized Google, Mobile, and of course, Google.com. It won’t matter if you’re on Wall Street or Main Street — you’ll have free, easy and fast access to real-time prices from NYSE on Google.

It’s really quite impressive how Google is playing its cards to get into more and more repositories of crown jewels. When I was at LexisNexis, we were resigned to having 20-minute delayed quotes. Yahoo and all the other players since the dawn of the web have also had to settle for 20-minute delay. Not Google.

Real-time everything, all the time.

Technorati Tags: Google, stock quotes, Google Finance

o check out the new features on Google Finance, and let us know what you think.

Google Finance seems to be heading in the right direction. The new home page is a model of clear information presentation, and the “most popular ticker queries” feature is a day trader’s dream.

Technorati Tags: finance, google