A good friend of mine recently complained to me that there are no good mobile finance solutions. He has a regular consumer mobile (SonyE w800i) “What about Yahoo Finance?“, I asked …”Na..doesn’t work” he quickly dismissed. When I learned about Google Finance for Mobile I quickly ran to compare. Google’s solution includes easy access to financial info on the go through text messaging or mobile browsing - but so does Yahoo so whats the big deal?

The deal is: elegance & simplicity - the atoms of execution. On the surface Yahoo’s solution should even be better. The Finance page is more informative, there is even a cool feature that enables you to send yourself an SMS with the web address instead of typing the address yourself. The problem started when I tried (God forbid) using it - I just couldn’t login. I got the link, tried to add a quote only to get a ‘turn off’ message - “Invalid Yahoo ID or password”. Now remember I got here by sending the SMS, the least you can do for me is let me login…NO. No link to login, “Help” didn’t help and the other roads I tried didn’t lead to Rome (login). So there I was, yet again disappointed of a Yahoo service that beat Google to the mark but missed on execution.

Google’s WAP browsing experience and portfolio management was a breeze to operate, a joy to use and has now become my official on the go stock tool - BAMM…Bookmarked!

Yet again Usability wins the day. I could care less about the tech behind these two platforms - when the execution is seamless and the basics are there, your a step a way from success…or as in Google’s case…swimming in it!