London 2012 football: Today’s Doodle is a penalty shoot-out

10 Aug 2012

Google’s daily interactive Doodles are likely costing companies a lot of down-time – though perhaps no more than yesterday when Ireland held its breath as Katie Taylor won Ireland’s first gold medal at London 2012. Today’s game is not a boxing match (in which we’d all excel, of course) but a penalty shoot-out where players need to save more goals than they let in.

The letters of the famous search engine logo are stacked up on either side of the goal, while your opponent is ready in the distance. You’re the goalie, using the arrows on the keyboard to move side to side and the space bar to jump.

Your opponent has five footballs, and what you save will roll back out for him to try again from where it lands. The game ends, however, when your opponent scores three times. The keeper will be frustrated when he lets a third in, but he’ll be in tears if he does so without scoring any saves himself.

Like the previous interactive Olympic Doodles, you can keep playing the penalty shoot-out after it has left the Google homepage – so there’s no excuse to spend all your working hours having a bash today… ahem!

Google doodle - London 2012 football

USA’s women’s team traditionally does well at the Olympics football tournament and London 2012 is no exception, with the ladies having scooped up the goal in a final against Japan yesterday. The men’s final takes place tomorrow at 3pm when Brazil takes on Mexico, while Korea and Japan will go head to head tonight at 7.45pm to decide the bronze-medal winner.

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com