Google is rounding up its World Cup experience with new game videos

Jun 14, 2014 20:03 GMT  ·  By

Google is obviously trying to stay on top of what its millions upon millions of users are interested in and at this moment in time, that’s the World Cup.

After introducing an easy-to-use analytics page and introducing plenty of information in a knowledge graph on the search results page for the “World Cup” query, the company has decided to sign a deal with ESPN in order to provide users with the latest highlights.

The two companies are working together to mix the in-progress highlights with those from after the match with all search related queries to the tourney.

These will appear across desktop web browsers, but also on smartphones, and tablets. This happens both if you search for a team’s name or the World Cup, which means that you’re surely going to find a quick and easy way to get to the content you want.

Thankfully, unlike other ESPN content, you don’t have to provide any sort of authentication or cable credentials in order to watch the videos, which means that anyone can watch it.

Unfortunately, unlike the YouTube videos you’ll sometimes find in queries, these won’t play directly in the search results page, but you will get redirected to the ESPNFC.com website where you’ll be able to check them out.

ESPN is currently live-streaming all the matches in the tourney to pay-TV subscribers. “As befits the world’s biggest sporting event, ESPN and Google are teaming up for the first time to make ESPN FC video highlights available instantly to millions of fans and to make it easier to find live games on WatchESPN within Google Search,” John Kosner, EVP of ESPN Digital and Print Media told Variety.

Google isn’t the only company that has been particularly interested in the World Cup this year. In fact, both Facebook and Twitter have launched tools to help with the event. Facebook, for instance, has created a special hub where people can check out the latest information, as well as another one where you’ll be able to check out technical issues related to the game.

Twitter, for its part, has been promoting the #WorldCup hashtag and even brought back emojis which help people integrate a country’s flag by adding a hashtag with the first three letters out of the country’s name. While these may not work for embedded tweets or via Twitter clients, they’ll still be visible directly from the Twitter.com.