I happen to be in Munich, Germany. I always do extra email when on the road and I also catch up late at night on Internet doings.

Google Finance certainly is one of the "doings" I have been reading about. Bloggers and newspapers have gone crazy speculating on what Google's entry into "finance" means for other financial sites and particularly for Yahoo Finance.

My two cents: it means lots - but for different reasons than the usual suspects have proffered. To me the key is what Bob Davis, king of Lycos back in the 1990s, stated to me back in 1997: namely that he had to make Lycos into a media company and not just a portal company. Bob tried, but failed back then. And nobody believed he was correct.

Now that Yahoo and Google see what they can do with keywords they realize that as big a business that it is going to be (and it will get much larger) they have to be ready for the next act. And the next act is being media companies and owning content. Perhaps Dow Jones makes sense?

I checked out the Google Finance entry for Jupitermedia. Considering that Google just launched, I thought that overall it was a better presentation than what Yahoo Finance has for Jupitermedia. One quibble: I was surprised that when one clicked on "Official Blog" on Google Finance that the link takes one to the JupiterResearch blog. The JR blog is great, but it is not Jupitermedia's official blog. If anything Google should link to this blog as I write about the company (and other issues) and the JR team writes about more important things such as "what direction is the Internet going."

In the end, however, the weakness of both Yahoo and Google is content. They both are dependent on sources that they do not own. Someday ownership will matter. Ownership of content makes somebody king. I have witnessed this fact since starting in business in 1971. I have been successful owning content for 36 years, and now see content weaving its magic in the image space as Jupitermedia has moved into a supreme position against much larger image organizations soley because of its content ownership position (and a big help from an incredibly productive and talented team that has been with me for many years).

Google and Yahoo will slug it out for years to come. But one of them is going to buy significant media assets and content. It will be interesting to see which one makes the first move. Perhaps Dow Jones makes sense?