Note: Here’s a post for those who follow stocks, but the same rules apply throughout life.

Google has improved their finance tool, now with AI! Groan. I guess it was inevitable; taking a useful service, hiring a bunch of programmers and a staff to maintain it, and then improving it until it is barely useful. Maybe by the time you are reading this Google will have corrected the errors it induced by changing something that didn’t need improving. Not likely, considering the history of improved products. Fortunately, there are competitors, some of which have histories, too.

For weeks, Google has been teasing a new AI-enabled upgrade to its Finance pages. Fine by me as long as I can turn it off. I track my stocks, or tracked them, by opening up a tab for my watchlist in Google Finance. Simple. The stock, its price, whether it is up or down, and with one click I could get financial data like market cap, and maybe news. (Some of my investments are in stocks that are so small that news is rare, but hence, more valuable when it appears.)

The AI upgrade overwhelmed all of that, at least from what I can see.

You’ve seen many screengrabs of Google’s Finance page in this blog. I’d like to create a new graphic of the old screen, but it’s gone. I tried grabbing a screengrab of the new graphic, but the screen is active enough that it sweeps a new news screen across the image instead. Not useful for tracking my portfolio. 

Grumble. Gripe. Gripe.

Cheer and and and salute sites like craigslist that keep it simple and useful. I think their style will eventually come back into style, and all they have to do is nothing. Well done. Well played.

There are many other ways of tracking stocks and portfolios. I’m not going to list them. There are too many.

What I’m hunting for is simplicity, convenience, and of course, accuracy. 

The data I want is simple, as I described above.

Accuracy is assumed, with some allowances for data transfer rates, which don’t bother me.

Convenience blocks out many sites that require regular log in sessions, drilling down to the key data, or bizarre formats. 

Silicon Investor is a site I’ve used for so long (decades?) but predominantly for discussion boards. But, it keeps me logged in, and my data is available. Looks kinda kludgy, but it works.

On a more official page, there is my official portfolio tracker on Schwab, which I rarely access because its security is justifiably tighter, which I appreciate. But logging into any system provides a risk of logging in incorrectly, which can cascade into a maelstrom of having to prove I am who I say I am. Great site. Nice service. But I only access it about once a week, not casually.

Whew. I just brought up Yahoo’s wikipedia page because I was about to refer to the company. Founded in 1994! Yeah. I knew it was old, back when any site was considered a success, and probably temporary; but I remember using it before Google (founded in 1998). Maybe they’ve maintained their simple style (and somehow survived years of drama). Ta da! They have. (Just ignore the realities of what they’ve been through. There should be a movie.)

Voila! Create a new account (because obviously it forgot the original one, or I did). Load up the stock symbols (while deleting all of their suggested ones that were ultra-mega-caps). And notice that it exceeds my expectations. They even include range data (and don’t worry if you don’t know what that means.)

OK. I think I’ve found my new site to check regularly, for a while, until something else better comes along, and maybe not even going back to Google because this is better than that.

Craigslist, wikipedia, I do like such sites.

And I wonder if a minimalist, luddite-light, simplistic approach is about to see a resurgence.

E-bikes are becoming more popular. EVs are potentially simpler than gas-powered cars. Have you seen the new electric pickup, the Slate? Simple, cheap, electric. Roll-up windows are back! There are far fewer systems to distract you from driving. If you want to modify it, then modify it. I want one (pending having enough funds and finding out how best to carry bicycles in the bed.)

Give me a simple car, and a simple camera, and a simple computer, and a simple life.

New does not mean improved, but maybe, just maybe, it may begin to.

Thanks for the years of service, Google. I liked you best when you didn’t want to be evil.