FIFA.com partners Google for fans to celebrate 2010 FIFA World Cup

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in South Africa. During the month-long tournament, millions of fans around the world will follow the games.

To mark the event, FIFA.com, the world’s official football website, and Google have collaborated on a range of online features to help supporters keep track of how each team is doing throughout the tournament. Whether you’re searching for FIFA World Cup news or want to voice your opinion on a player’s performance, we have a number of ways for fans to stay on top of the action:

• Follow your team while browsing the Internet: stay up-to-date when you’re online with the FIFA.com Chrome extension. Get a live feed of FIFA World Cup results, news and match statistics and if you’re supporting a particular team, personalise the gadget for alerts of goals scored by your team as they happen
• See the latest scores and schedules in search results: search for [world cup], [world cup spain], [world cup group g] and more, and you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll find quick links to game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles on FIFA.com
• Follow the tournament on your personalised home page: get all the latest information on FIFA World Cup teams, players and matches streamed to your very own home page with the iGoogle Gadget. If you want to know more about where all the action is happening, click on the ‘venues’ tab to take a closer look at the stadiums
• Get a feel for what it’s like to be there:  FIFA.com and South African Tourism have used Google Maps to add information about the host cities, stadiums and attractions, giving people easy access to these sights with Street View and 3D views : maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica

Matt Stone, Head of FIFA New Media, commented:

“In a landmark initiative, the world’s greatest football site, FIFA.com, has teamed up with one of the world’s leading search engines, Google, to give the global community of football enthusiasts unprecedented ease of access to the news and information they crave. From live feeds to in-depth data on matches, teams and venues, FIFA.com and Google provide every Internet user with a privileged, personalised experience of the World Cup.”

You can get access to all of these features from FIFA.com and Google by visiting google.com/worldcup