Google gives Search a dedicated ‘finance’ tab, drops portfolio feature from Google Finance

Google is no stranger to displaying finance-related information, having launched a dedicated Google Finance portal way back in 2006 to highlight data around stocks, mutual funds, and financial news, among other relevant tidbits. And Google Search itself has long displayed some financial data, including graphs that show companies’ share prices since they first went public.

But now Google is ramping things up with the launch of a dedicated Finance tab directly within Google Search.

Here, users will be able to track financial information based on their specific interests. The tab will include a section called “market summary,” which provides a breakdown of specific stocks a user wishes to track, recommendations on other stocks worth following, as well as recently searched stocks, news, and related items. There is also a handful of other nested tabs, including “your stocks,” “local markets,” and “world markets,” and Google said that it will be possible to set up notifications for when stocks go up or down significantly.

To access the new tab, enter a financial search on the desktop or mobile web and then hit the “more” button, although at the time of writing the new feature doesn’t yet seem to be live.

The new layout will also be available directly through the existing Google Finance web page, though the company is using this opportunity to “retire” a few of the existing Google Finance features, including historical tables, portfolio, and — related to this — the ability to download the portfolio, Google product manager Haimin Lee wrote in a blog post.

Google revealed plans to eliminate these features back in October, though the decision will no doubt prove unpopular with many who had become accustomed to tracking and comparing stock positions over periods of time.