Entrevue avec Dominic Jones à propos de Google Finance

(Ce billet fait suite à mon article précédent « L’impact de Google Finance sur les entreprises publiques« .)

L’expertise de relations avec les investisseurs sur le web est encore émergente, mais ses chantres commencent à avoir assez de crédibilité auprès des grandes entreprises pour voir leurs efforts porter fruit. Un des principaux promoteur de ce champs de pratique est Dominic Jones, de IR Web Report. Son expertise rayonnant sur l’industrie des relations avec les investisseurs en ligne depuis quelques années, j’ai voulu lui demander ce qu’il pensait de l’arrivée de Google dans le monde des finances.

J’ai donc effectué une entrevue par courriel avec Dominic. Il est intéressant de voir que notre opinion diverge sur certains points. Ses positions sont évidemment très pertinentes et permettront d’enrichir la discussion à ce sujet.

L’entrevue est en anglais. Il est possible que je la traduise, selon le niveau d’intérêt envers ce billet.

MC: What do you think about the « Discussion group » function? (bottom left) Is it a incentive for companies to be more open-minded regarding direct dialogue with investors? Do you think that many companies will initiate or participate to discussion groups? Can it replace companies IR weblogs?

DJ: The discussion forum as a concept is old. It has been part of the Yahoo! Finance service for a long time. However, Google is promising to have a higher level of moderation of the message boards. But it doesn’t matter what Google does, public discussion boards always end up being hijacked by extremists on one side or another. This is because there is no accountability on a discussion forum. People can use pseudonyms and they can say what they like.

If you are with a public company, you never should participate in such message boards, officially or unofficially. If people are foolish enough to believe what they read in these forums, it’s their problem, not yours.

That said, there is a place for a company controlled message board or discussion forum. Royal Dutch Shell has had one for many years where activists, consumers, students and company executives can engage each other. This is a controlled forum, and it can be highly effective if you have the time to manage it.

MC: What do you think about the « Blog posts » function? (bottom right) Is it a incentive for companies to be more attentive to bloggers and maybe begin to work with them?

DJ: This is probably the most interesting feature, but it was not that useful on the pages of a number of companies I reviewed. That is because these companies are not followed by blogs, so the blog content was weak or was from spam sites set up to generate advertising revenue.

If Google keeps this functionality, I can see it leading to a lot more higher quality stock research blogs. But here, again, Google has to control the spam and weed out the scammers.

We’ll have to wait and see.

MC: Do you think that many companies will use Google Finance as a resource for theirs investors, using it as a « external independant information center », and even linking to it from their website?

DJ: No, I don’t think they will because they will be afraid of getting into legal trouble. They will not want to be associated with some of the opinions expressed in the Discussion forum, in the news area or the blog posts.

I also don’t know how many investors will use Google Finance. This is simply because it isn’t easy to find. There’s no direct link to it from the Google homepage.

The key here is content. If Google Finance can offer a more complete range of information than other sources, then it will be used because investors will go to where the information is.

MC: Overall, what do you think of Google Finance? Is it better than other tools (MSN Money, Yahoo Finance)? Is it a step in the right direction for investor relations on the web?

DJ: It is better for the information provided on Canadian and other non-US companies. None of the other finance portals have taken international markets seriously.

But other than that, Google Finance is not as good as Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money, Marketwatch.com, Morningstar or even Nasdaq.com, which is probably the most underrated finance site.

Still for week one, Google Finance is exciting.

Donc, Dominic nous dit que les forums sont un problème plutôt qu’une opportunité, ce avec quoi je ne suis pas certain d’être d’accord. Je préfère attendre de voir si Google mettra en place un mécanisme de modération qui permettra de mettre un peu d’ordre dans la capharnaum qui les caractérise généralement.

Pour ce qui est de la difficulté à trouver Google Finance, je suis d’accord. Pour le moment, il s’agit d’une version beta. Tout de même, toute recherche dans Google pourra donner accès à Google Finance.

À la lumière de cette discussion, je suis généralement d’accord avec Dominic mais j’ai un biais encore plus fort que le sien vers la transparence envers les investisseurs. Nous verrons donc avec le temps l’impact réel de Google Finance sur les entreprises publiques une fois que quelques unes d’entre elles auront commencé à expérimenter avec cette nouvelle plateforme de diffusion.by