Google Finance

When it comes to business news and headlines,
Google Finance is one of the most valuable resources
you can choose on the site. It’s the obvious place to turn if you
want to check up on individual stock prices. But you can access
 other kinds of financial information as well.
Go to http://finance.google.com to view general financial
news headlines and market summaries.

Google Finance information is limited to U.S. companies,
 and it does not provide details on stock options or bonds.
 On the other hand, if you are researching a competitor
or another company in your field, and that company
offers publicly traded stock, you’ll find extensive
 information about it. You can test this out by doing a search for
Google Inc. You’ll find a one-week stock chart,
 blog posts and discussions about the company, related
 companies, names and titles of senior management,
 and company summary, among other things.

In this chapter you learned about Google’s many resources
 for business information. To be sure, Google provides you
with information on virtually any subject.
Butwhen you’re under pressure to produce reports
 that are complete and accurate,
Google also provides you with specialized business content
 as well as information focused on particular topics.

Go Google have described ways for marketing your
products and services—things that a small business or a lone
entrepreneur can obviously market online. Even if all you
 have are your opinions about a subject, you can generate
 revenue through a blog, for instance.
But after you list your product descriptions and create
your blog listings, what do you have left? Just look
through your filing cabinets, your notebooks, your
sketchbooks, your photo albums, and your disk
drives. Chances are there’s a wealth of information you
 have created over the years that has never seen the light of day.

Google Base (http://base.google.com) is
difficult to classify—and frankly, the name doesn’t really
 describe it well. Google Information Base or
Google Info Database might be clearer.

You can use Google Base in two ways: as a consumer
or as a producer of information or merchandise for sale.
Most of this chapter focuses on Google as a business outlet:
a place to make your content or products available to
potential buyers. But it’s also a specialty search engine that
forms an interesting marketplace. It’s far less well known
than the main Google search service or Google Product Search.
But it has the potential to be a viable place to buy and sell if it
catches on. Simply knowing that Google Base is there and
understanding what it does is the first step toward taking
advantage of what Google is making available to you for free.