Google makes a play for NCAA March Madness fans

Computerworld - With the first round of the NCAA men's Division I basketball championship under way, Google Inc. is making a play of its own.

Google today launched several tools to help college basketball fans who are deep into March Madness.

"I always go a little crazy -- you might even say mad -- this time of year," wrote Nundu Janakiram, an associate product manager at Google, in a blog post. "I still root for my hometown Arizona State Sun Devils. I fill out my bracket ... and get into arguments with friends of mine from the [University of Arizona]. I'm a little obsessed. If you're like me, then I have some good news for you. We have several products that can help you follow the tournament."

To track the action, basketball fans can add a new College Basketball 2009 iGadget to get minute by minute news on their Google personalized home pages. Google search users now will get live scores when they search for their favorite team, and they can do local searches to find the best spot to watch the big games. The company also noted that, as expected, news about the tournament will be all over Google News.

"This is a very good idea from Google," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. "March Madness is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, and it's avidly tracked by millions of people. Since many of those millions of people also have jobs and stuff, they need a way to satisfy their craving for hoop info during the workday. Streaming games in the office is too much, but being able to get Google updates might be just right for many. And it gives Google a way to capture some eyeballs that might otherwise be hitting ESPN or CBSsports.com."

Google has been busy adding new features in the past several months.

Early in February, the company unveiled an upgrade to Google Maps that allows people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices. Google Latitude not only shows the location of friends, but it can also be used to contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail.

A week after unveiling Google Latitude, the company announced that its Gmail software can now show the location of e-mail writers.

Then later in the month, Google introduced its new Google Apps Status Dashboard, which is designed to immediately alert users to any problems with the hosted services. The dashboard is designed to let users check on the current availability of the company's various services, which include Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video.

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