title: Getting basic stock & company information given company name
body: <p>Given a company name, say Google, I want to be able to identify the link to the company profile page in say </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Google Finance (eg. <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOG</a>) </li>
  <li>Bloomberg (<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GOOG:US" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GOOG:US</a>)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>and extract company information eg. "<em>Google Inc. is a global technology company that provides a web based search engine through its website. The Company offers a wide range of search options, including web, image, groups, directory, and news searches</em>"</p>
  
  <p>How can I do it, I think I need some API to identify the stock ticker based on company name, then somehow build the URL to the appropriate site? It seems Bloomberg has an API, but its very large, could someone point me in the right direction? </p>
  
  <p>For the 1st requirement, it seems from another question, a query to Yahoo Finance API can do the trick: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><a href="http://autoc.finance.yahoo.com/autoc?query=yahoo&amp;callback=YAHOO.Finance.SymbolSuggest.ssCallback" rel="nofollow">http://autoc.finance.yahoo.com/autoc?query=yahoo&amp;callback=YAHOO.Finance.SymbolSuggest.ssCallback</a></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>But it doesn't seem to provide the needed info for building the URL to Bloomberg (missing country info?). </p>