Google Finance - Cool but lacking

Many of us at Factiva have been checking out the latest offering from that search company that rhymes with Zoogle. And I have to say, Google Finance is darn slick. Those Flash-base stock charts are very nice. Right now, however it just doesn't have enough content to make it a serious contender in the corporate-information-search market.

Certainly this was launched (in beta) as a catch-up with the likes of Yahoo! Finance and they're no doubt checking it out now. But I'm sure our friends at Hoover's are also checking it out closely because it probably will be trying to eat away at their base -- the small shops that need cheap, accurate corporate info. Hoovers and other companies that charge their clients for business information (like Factiva, certainly) are going to have to continue to differentiate on content and on services such as integration and consulting. I think corporations will continue to want to get the info the need into their end-users' work flow.

"Free" is good enough for some, but not likely good enough for most of the enterprise clients who need high-quality business information and often need it integrated into their workflow.