The new Google Finance upgrade is spot on. I love the new visualizations for sector performance. I don’t know if its innovative enough to make it in the information aesthetics blog, but it’s an incredibly dense source of information in a very small amount of screen real-estate. Here’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about, with the help bubble expanded to explain what all the colors mean:

sector_summary.gif

Also, the addition of substancial historic data means Google is now the definitive source for financial research for me. I hope they open up an API so that users can analyze this backlog of financial data in a clean, efficient way. Just imagine the mashups that are possible!

My only complaint is that I just introduced my grandmother to Google Finance this past weekend. Now when she returns and the site looks different it’s going to affect her chances of adoption because it might be jarring to see a different splash page. I Hope the change is smooth for her.

This video summarizing the upgrade (found via TechCrunch) is great.