It’s quite rare that Google makes a post in its UK “Press Centre,” and today, the company once again failed to write something. I’m especially disappointed, however, because an announcement about a cricket OneBox seemed so well-suited to the site.
Instead, Sadeesh Duraisamy, a software engineer, and Alok Goel, a business product manager, explained the feature on the Official Google Blog. “To make it easier for you to indulge your interest in a game John Fowles characterized as ‘chess made flesh,’ we’ve simplified your search for cricket scores. Just type [cricket] in a Google search box and you’ll see a brief score of all the current cricket matches.”
The pair also noted, “A single click will also give you access to a detailed cricket score card.”
That’s all well and good – excellent, really, for cricket enthusiasts. Fans of other sports may be led to wonder where their OneBoxes are, however. And Ionut Alex Chitu (of the Google Operating System blog) discovered one more questionable aspect of this development.
“In true Google spirit, the OneBox links to three sources of information, some of the best sites about cricket, but it’s interesting to see that the links contain oi=prbx, the same value used for the Bourne Ultimatum promotion,” he wrote. “‘Prbx’ probably means ‘promotion box’ and that doesn’t look very good for Google.”
Neither, really, does the abandoned UK Press Centre. Google India’s Press Center is also pretty empty.
