Following in the footsteps of Yahoo!...

Google is today set to launch a beta test version of Google Finance, a website aggregating information about public and private companies and mutual funds that features an interactive chart correlating news and other events with stock price spikes and falls.

Charts can be changed to show stock activity for different time periods by clicking and dragging, and they can be zoomed in on to get more detailed information. News stories that correspond to specific days are displayed on the side and are automatically adjusted to reflect the selected time period.

Users have been able to get a stock quote by typing a ticker into the Google search bar. Now the Google Finance page will be one of the top links on the results page when a ticker is typed in the search bar.

Google Finance includes links to news about companies, a personalised area for keeping track of stock quotes for select companies, related news that automatically displays news related to the tickers searched on and a portfolio section for keeping track of companies a user is researching or trading. It also has charts that show the volume of news stories for a particular company on a specific day as well as company facts, summary, financials, management and related companies and links to outside news and finance sources.

Full story: silicon.com