Rumor: Google may get in finance game
Google investors who watched the stock plunge nearly 20 percent late Monday following a disappointing earnings report may soon be able to turn to Google itself to track their investments.
According to an industry source, Google is developing a personal finance site to rival Yahoo Finance. The talk is that a Google Finance, or whatever it might be called, will include real-time streaming quotes, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), news syndication and aggregation, and a retail-trading feature that could end up being imbedded into the company's instant-message service, Google Talk. It could launch by April.
Although the company may eventually decide not to launch a finance site, it wouldn't be much of a stretch--and it actually seems like a likely extension of its current news and alert services.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
