I have a confession: I am addicted to Google. It is true, I am afraid. I use Gmail, Google Reader, Google Documents and a lot more, every single day. As sad as it is, I can no longer imagine life without Google.

That being said, Google has a habit of throwing an offering out there just to be out there. They then tweak and adjust it over time. I have to hope this is what they are doing with Google Finance.
While everyone applauds Google for its focus on minimalism, this is NOT what I want in a financial information portal. The page is virtually empty and what content is there consists mainly of various news feeds from the wire services. In other words, it is basically a news aggregator that any 16 year old computer nerd could cobble together.

The only redeeming feature for Google Finance is the integration with your own Google account, so you can customize the page to get only the information you want. However, I see no advantage to this over your iGoogle page, where you can import the various news feeds from any category, not just finance.

I hate to say it, but I see no reason for this site to exist, as there is nothing here that Google does not do elsewhere much better.
Am I just missing the boat here? Do any of you use Google Finance as a research tool? If so, what do you like about it? Let me know in the comments.