Google today launches its financial information service, Google Finance, going head-to-head with the likes of Reuters and Bloomberg.

Not so long ago Reuters ruled the roost. Its terminals were stationed in the offices of every serious news organization. Then Bloomberg took them on and, for a while, partially eclipsed the venerable British firm.

Now Google, the self-designated “organizer of the world’s information” is putting its head above a very exposed parapet.

The Times (London) reports: “Initially Google Finance will be a North American product, although it is expected to cover British companies with a US listing. British and other international versions are expected to follow. The search engine operator will not seek advertising at first, in keeping with its usual strategy, but instead will wait until an audience builds before trying to profit from traffic.”

At a lunch for New York journalists this week, Eric Schmidt, Google’s grown-up CEO, said: “Office is not the business we’re in,” despite the purchase of Writely. Google could do with a good rich-text editor, he intimated.

Well, here at Google Future we’ve been saying that for a while in the face of a stream of speculation that the G-guys were planning an all-out assault on Microsoft’s cash cows. The meme was carried along by such luminaries as Jason Calacanis who thought this was exactly what they had in mind.

However, recent damp-squib releases and leaked performance forecasts which talked the company down, have all contributed to the realization that the denizens of the Googleplex are human after all, and not some posthuman advance of the species.

The fact remains, Google is not a software company. Google Pack proved that. The company is essentially a search-based advertising agency with wide aspirations to control the markets of a wide range of media, including IPTV, the next big thing.

Schmidt also said that says that fears over the loss of “network neutrality” are largely unfounded.

The Register reports: “Intriguingly, Schmidt said no infrastructure or service provider has yet to ask Google to pay a higher toll. Comments by AT&T chief Ed Whitacre [suggested] that content providers need to pay more to guarantee traffic quality for data moved over his company’s pipes.”

It’s hard to see how the current freedom enjoyed by everyone on the Internet could be dispensed with in “the land of the free”.

“On the other hand, Verizon’s expensive fiber investments leave plenty of capacity to spare to carry internet traffic such as the web page you’re reading alongside the IPTV services it wants to introduce. And it’s hard to see who else is going to invest in bringing the USA’s increasingly antiquated network infrastructure up to date.”

Google’s acquisition of large amounts of “dark” (abandoned) fiber, plays into this question and surely points the way forward for the company. An online Office has been a red herring Agatha Christie would be proud of.

Garett Rogers over at ZDNet has been poking about in Google’s soft underbelly as usual and has come up with yet another surprise: Google has landed on Mars.

Now, I know property prices are something awful these days, especially down in the Valley, so a Martian Googleplex makes sense. Imagine, no regulators to shave your profit margins and force you to do evil against your will. No nasty telcos insisting you can’t use their pipes for free. Idyllic, or what?

Seriously though, the estimable Rogers writes: “I started digging and you will never guess what I found — a Google Maps type application that lets you view Mars. This service is called ‘Google Mars’. Using this service, you can browse the Martian landscape the same way as using Google Maps.”

America’s freedom to use taxpayer-funded data certainly pays off in facilities like this. European countries, including Britain, charge firms for using Government-funded data, thus choking off this kind of enterprise.

Wake up and smell the Google latte.

It’s been on the cards. Now we know. Writely.com, the online word processor, has been bought by Google.

The equivalent of a Web-based Word bundled with other online facilities and features, the acquisition adds another string to Google’s fabled Web version of Office.

And Writely so.

Read the story on The Official google blog.