Tag Archives: Sports

Google Search and the Assistant help you stay on top of the ICC Cricket World Cup action

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Over the next month and a half, cricket fans across the country will be gripped in the fever that is the ICC Cricket World Cup! We’re as excited as you are, and have been working on many features that will be lighting up across our products to help you get the most out of this exciting sporting season. From Google Search to the Assistant, here’s how you can stay in the know -- and even have a bit of fun.  


Google Search
During the cricketing action, you can explore the tournament table, stats, and upcoming matches right in Google Search. Just search for “ICC Cricket World Cup” in English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, or Urdu to get started.




Get in on the action with your favorite team—for instance search for “India cricket team”—to read up on the latest news, view squads, lineups, and even dive into winning probabilities, which will continuously update before and during the game.


If you can’t watch a live match, Search can help you stay on top of the game. You can view short video clips highlighting exciting moments, and read through live commentary in English and Hindi. If you’re following a team or all matches in the World Cup, you’ll also see game notifications appear on your home screen to make sure you don’t drop the ball.


To keep track of all the matches, you also can pin real-time scores on your Android phone screen from Search on mobile browsers or from the Android Google App. Find the match you’re looking for, then tap and drag to pin the match anywhere on your screen.




After each match, you can dive into summaries including player of the match, top performers and key moments. Within an hour after a game ends, you’ll find video recaps from select broadcasting partners featuring highlights of major match moments.



Google Assistant and Google Home

To make sure you never miss a game, try asking your Assistant, “Hey Google, when does India play next?” And while you’re watching your favorite team hit another six or rip through the opposing top order, you can ask your Assistant for interesting stats about your favorite player or team -- like how many career runs a player has, or who the player of a specific match was. You can even get up-to-date stats by asking, "Hey Google, what are the current Cricket standings?" This also works in Google Search.




Highlights, live audio, behind-the-scenes and more from YouTube


On YouTube you can get highlights to every game on the official ICC channel. And top teams like India and Australia will take you behind the scenes with the players on their YouTube channels.    


Now that you have everything you need to stay informed during the ICC Cricket World Cup, it’s time to pick up your bat and ball and dive into the action!

One Shining AI Moment: when machine learning meets your bracket

The stats. The uniforms. Sheer wild guesses. Everyone has a strategy for making their picks for the NCAA’s March Madness tournament. But this year there’s a new play in the book: machine learning.


Google Cloud has teamed up with the NCAA to host a competition on Kaggle, the world's largest online community of data scientists, challenging participants to build and train machine learning models to forecast the games’ outcomes. Kaggle has hosted contests for the tournament in the past, but this year’s competition is taking things to the next round with a new data set that contains every play-by-play moment in men’s and women’s NCAA Division I basketball since 2009—more than 40 million plays.


The submission deadline for the competition is this Thursday, prior to the start of the tournament. Submissions will be scored by log loss, a common way of measuring accuracy of machine learning models. A total of $100,000 will be awarded across both the men’s and women’s competitions for the best performing applications of machine learning (which probably outdoes whatever happens in your office pool). And because the competition is based on ML models, not basketball know-how, it’s anyone’s game to win. Talk about a Cinderella story.


The massive data set being used in this competition represents just one area where Google Cloud is teaming up with the NCAA as their official public cloud provider. The NCAA is also in the process of migrating 80+ years of data across 24 sports to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), using Google tools to power analyses of teams and players. But for the data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts participating in the Kaggle competition, the fun is already underway. May the best model survive, advance and take home the championship!

We’ve got your playbook for football Sunday

Just in time for the coin toss, we’re here with some ways your Google Assistant can help you prep for game day, as well as some trending recipes state by state.


“Hey Google, let’s make buffalo wings”

The Google Assistant's recipe feature, available on speakers like Google Home, is a host’s best friend: you can send a recipe straight from mobile search or the Assistant on your phone (iPhone and Android) to your speaker. From there, just say “Hey Google, start recipe,” and you can follow hands-free step-by-step directions as you go. You can also ask questions like “what’s a substitute for chipotle chili powder?” or “how many grams of cornmeal in a cup?” and then go right back to the recipe by saying “Hey Google, next step.” Set multiple timers at once and even name them (cornbread, simmer); listen to music and podcasts to get your game face on.


You can also try one of these questions with your Google Assistant to get game day details, highlights and a few surprises:


  • “Hey Google, give me a game prediction” 
  • “Hey Google, coach me”
  • “Hey Google, let’s play Lucky Trivia Sports” 
  • “Hey Google, touchdown!” 

And since the Google Assistant is available across devices, you can keep up with the game no matter where you are. If you’re running late to the party, ask the Google Assistant in your Android Auto car for the score. Walking to the corner store to stock up on snacks? Your Assistant on your phone or headphones will have the latest. And if you’re at home looking to fill the time between plays, ask the Assistant on your speaker to play sports trivia.


Now we’re cooking

Whether you’re a Philly fan, a New England diehard or just there for the commercials, good food is non-negotiable. With data from the Google News Lab, here’s a look at the most uniquely-searched game day recipes by state. Turns out the two rival teams’ home states are both chowing down on chili, but from “bacon shrimp” in Montana to “calzone” in Kansas to “crab dip” in South Carolina, maybe these unique searches will inspire you to go beyond chips and dip! You can check out more on Google Trends.
game day recipes 2018

BRB, game’s almost starting.

Walk the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine like the pros with Street View

Earlier this year, Turner Sports approached us with an idea: Help us change the way golf fans experience the sport’s biggest event of the year, the Ryder Cup. Always up for helping users go where they’ve never gone before, we loaned Turner a Street View Trekker. They hit the links to collect hole-by-hole imagery at Minnesota’s Hazeltine National Golf Club, site of this year's tournament starting today through October 2.

Over two days, the team covered the 160-acres course.

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Randy Dickerson, of Turner Sports, gets ready for his first trek. Randy and team carried the 40lb camera over the 5+ mile golf course at Hazeltine National Golf Club.

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Not to be outdone by past Street View collects captured by snowmobile, boat and zipline, the Trekker hitched a ride on a golf cart.
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Explore the images on Google Maps, or walk the course like the pros using theHazeltine Explorer, an interactive tour developed by Turner and Ubilabs. Along with 360-degree views, the site, built with Google Maps APIs, features custom elevation graphs for every hole, integrated video highlights and course-specific historical moments.

Fans attending the event can also make use of the Ryder Cup app’s Wayfinding feature, available on Android and iOS. Built using Google Maps APIs, the feature includes a detailed view of the course with routing instructions that account for walking paths and crosswalks. The map also displays information about on-course amenities and facilities. 



Source: Google LatLong


Dive (or run, swim, vault…) into the Olympics with Google Trends

This year's Olympics in Rio brings together 10,500 athletes from 200+ countries to participate in 306 events, from archery to wrestling. To help you get even more out of the Games, we've created a Google Trends Olympic Hub where you can find fun facts, data insights, feature pages on sports and athletes, and more.

Olympics Trends Hub

Throughout the next few weeks, Google Trends will give you a unique view into the games with a new Trends Hub just for the Olympics. There, you’ll be able to see which athletes, events and moments are captivating audiences—and searches—worldwide. For example, which country is searching for beach volleyball the most? Landlocked Switzerland. And the title of most searched grandmother in the world goes to British swimmer Adam Peaty's nan.

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Here’s some of what you can expect from Trends over the next few weeks:

  • Search insights revealing what the world is wondering about the events—from fencing to synchronized swimming (and every moment in between!)
  • Data interactives like our alternative medal table and top searched sports per country
  • Trending sports and athletes lists, showing what’s of interest at any given moment
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Explore Trends in a new way

As you explore the site, you may notice something else—a new Google Trends Explore page. With a fresh design and features like a color-coded map, you can analyze search data in new ways. For example, you can compare interest in previous Olympic Games over the years:

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Every four years, the Olympics captivate the world’s attention. We’re excited to be able to help fans get even more out of the Games with insights from Search.

Source: Search


Let Google be your guide to Rio de Janeiro

The modern Olympic Games have been a defining moment for athletes and fans alike dating back to 1896. Next week, the 2016 cauldron will be lit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where thousands of athletes will come together to represent the strength and pride of their home countries with the world as their audience.

In celebration of the next chapter in Olympics history, we’re bringing the best our products have to offer to help people around the world stay up-to-date with the Olympic Games Rio 2016:
  • Discover the event schedule, medal counts, and athlete information in Search
  • Get results and view TV schedules in 30+ countries
  • Watch official broadcasters’ event highlights on YouTube in 60+ countries
  • Explore Rio and venues in Google Maps
  • Keep up to date with the latest search Trends from around the world
On Google, searching for information about your favorite athletes and sports, the medal race, or your country’s schedule has never been easier. Pro tip: if you search on the Google app on Android and iOS, you’ll also see an option to get automatic updates on top event and medal wins, so you’ll never miss a beat.
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To give you a glimpse into the Games, watch official broadcasters’ video highlights on YouTube in more than 60 countries around the world. And as an added bonus, YouTube is sending 15 top creators to Rio, giving you a taste of what it’s like to be there with mobile live streaming.

With Street View in Google Maps, everyone can enjoy the magic of Rio de Janeiro. Even if you’re a world away, preview the places where the world's most talented athletes will make history and explore the breathtaking beauty of Brazil.
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Google Trekker operator captures 360-degree imagery from inside Rio’s Olympic Park

Great triumphs, victories and stunning surprises await us all this summer. This is just a hint of what’s to come—we hope you’ll let Google be your guide.

Source: Search