title: Programmatic access to detailed historical financial data
body: <p>I know that Yahoo has a great API for accessing detailed financial metrics about a company documented at <a href="http://www.gummy-stuff.org/Yahoo-data.htm" rel="noreferrer">http://www.gummy-stuff.org/Yahoo-data.htm</a>. Yahoo also provides historical pricing data, documented at <a href="http://code.google.com/p/yahoo-finance-managed/wiki/csvHistQuotesDownload" rel="noreferrer">http://code.google.com/p/yahoo-finance-managed/wiki/csvHistQuotesDownload</a>.</p>
  
  <p>However, I'm trying to find a place where I can programmatically access detailed historical data, like what was a company's earnings 10 years ago, and not just the price of the stock. Does anyone know of such a site? I'm willing to pay, and I think <a href="http://www.mergent.com/servius" rel="noreferrer">http://www.mergent.com/servius</a>, but they seem very, very expensive. A single standardized financial report from a company costs 50 units, which is $2.50 under their pay-as-you-go plan.</p>
  
  <p>Google seems to have pretty good historical financial data that appears to go back 5 years. I may try scraping them, but I'd like to go back much, much further. Any ideas?</p>