In typical Google fashion, today the Internet giant launched its beta version of Google Finance. Google Finance primarily provides financial news, stock quotes, charts and data. In its trial form, the site is far less comprehensive than established financial sites such as Yahoo Finance, MSN Money Central, America Online's Money and TheStreet.com. It differs from the above competition in that it will not be creating any of its own news and/or stock information, including charts. It will use the popular AJAX technology to power many different aspects of the beta site.

My personal take on the new site is positive. I believe there is a lot of room for improvement on the homepage (speaking from a usability perspective). The individual stock information page has some very nice AJAX features and a very clean layout. My favorite feature being the ability to scroll back in time and check the news for that day on a specific stock. Overall I like the beta look and feel despite the limited functionality compared to the other well established finance sites such as Yahoo and TheStreet.com. For the record, my favorite and the one that is set as my homepage is Yahoo! Finance.