By Google has just launched an application available in the Android Market called “Scoreboard” that comes with the following description: “Access daily sports scores for Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, and College Sports. Get Live in-game notifications for your favorite teams.
And so it begins – Google starts competing in the content arena with the likes of plusmo, ESPN and other mobile software delivering sports information. As usual, before downloading, I took a read through the Scoreboard End User License Agreement and didn’t find anything of interest.
After having used some of the Pro Football, College Football and College Basketball applications on Android Market, I can safely say that Google’s Scoreboard for Android blows them all out of the water. It is neat and organized, quick to load, features all of the relevant data, has notifications and much, much more.
I’ve just been playing with Scoreboard for a few minutes, but I’m really excited to dive deeper into this application and hopefully provide you with a video review tomorrow.
For starters, when you’re on the apps homescreen you can press Menu to reveal a list of “Tips And Tricks”. We’ve compiled them below and stay tuned for more about Google Scoreboard for Android tomorrow!
- Click on the star to track all your favorite teams in one place
- Side swipe to jump to the next/previous date with scheduled games
- Everything that moves (settles with an animation) can be side swiped
- Long press a game to view details
- Long press a team button to manage its favorites and notification settings
- Long press a league button to manage all its teams’ favorites settings
- We save all downloaded data, you can always delete it if you need extra space. This wont affect your favorite settings.
- All lists are searchable, just start typing and it will filter the search results.
- Everything that can be pressed can also be longpressed.
- Explore…
Explore we will Google… Explore we will…
As an Android Lover, Tech Enthusiast, G1 owner and huge sports fan I’m incredibly excited about Scoreboard and this should instantly become one of the most popular apps on Android. However, as a person covering industry news, I’m wondering what type of competitive implication issues this will bring about.
Some would argue that open source is open source – Google is releasing an application with the very same implications that any other application developer would have upon them and has no advantage, they are just another player in the game. Others might be a bit more pessimistic saying Google is trying to corner too many markets.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with it. Google created a level playing field, why shouldn’t they have the opportunity to play on it? The application is 100% free and users can easily download a competing application if they would like – Scoreboard in no way gets preferential treatment.
All I can say is… I’m eager to see more apps like this from Google in the future. BRING IT ON, G!
(don’t forget to come back tomorrow for our full app review!)
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