Google and Netvibes offer the one thing a European can’t live without these days

Written on 9th June 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

All the German, Swiss, Austrian, Polish, Croatian, Portuguese readers of The Next Web Blog are probably pretty wound up already, Euro 2008 has begun! Now the Dutch, like me, get excited as well, since we have to face the Italians tonight. So please forgive your blogger to express his state of anxiousness with a blog post about this football highlight of the year (don’t even think of the word soccer, my dear American readers. And yes, it’s like the Superbowl). Several services offer ways to keep you up to date about the championship.

Google has made a real effort for its European customers. Besides from showing a special football Doodle, the search giant also developed a special OneBox. Everybody who uses a localized version of one the participating countries can use some handy shortcuts. Whenever you type in ‘euro 2008′, you’ll get info about the upcoming matches. And there’s ‘euro 2008 country_name‘ for the latest scores of your favorite team. I’ve saved the best for last though, as I haven’t mentioned the Euro 2008 Google map yet.

Four of my friends aren’t tech bloggers, so they actually have spare time. They’ve used it to travel to Switzerland to get pissed while wearing an orange outfit. I’m pretty sure they’ve used the handy map Google and transit authorities SBB and VBZ of Switzerland and OBB of Austria have made. So that even after a few beers, my friends still find the way to their hotel or the stadium. If that isn’t enough, Google Maps also showcases the match results and other statistics.

And then there’s Netvibes. Being an important European start-up, you can’t ignore this wave of football news and craziness. The Paris-based team has written a blog post in which they tell their users how to keep track of all the essential football news. There’s a “tailor made” Euro 2008 widget which functions as a score board and some news sites offer special football feeds.

So now your online life is all adapted to the football event, all you need now are some beers, friends, and a tv-set.

Oh, there’s actually one more thing I have to share with you. Follow the Twitter discussions! They’re really funny, especially since some people really think they know a lot about football. Use Summize to track them down.