Google goes football crazy for World Cup

The Google home page today celebrates the World Cup all across the planet, except (strangely) in the US, where the search giant is celebrating the birthday of the great Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

That pretty much tells us the US has no chance winning the cup in the global “soccer” game this time around, and completes Google’s preparation for the football event, which is destined to dominate everything for the rest of the month.

Thousands of expectant fans have already gathered at Soccer City in Johannesburg to mark the start of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, though great statesman, Nelson Mandela will miss the event after the death of a family member.

Jacques Cousteau died in 1997 following a career as a diver and explorer leaving behind many films and books exploring the underwater world.

If you’re in the US and want Google to celebrate the World Cup, the company’s official Twitter account tells us to expect a change later today.

If you’re a real footy fan, Google’s also offering you the tools you need to paint your browser and homepage in your team colours using Google Chrome themes and iGoogle themes.

You can also get World Cup live scores, news, schedules and stats from FIFA.com in your browser with the Chrome extension and on your homepage with the iGoogle gadget.

If you want to keep up with the action (which begins at 9.30am EST today) then there’s several ways you can keep up with games, online or on your phone.

Online:

1. ESPN3.com: Streaming 54 of the 64 games in real time.

2. UnivisionFutbol.com: Free live streams of all the games.

On your phone:

ESPN Mobile will offer 56 games live on FLO TV, MobiTV, Sprint TV and Verizon V-Cast. AT&T Mobile TV subscribers can get all 64 games.

Univision Movil will stream all its games live to Verizon V-Cast

Have you come across any other ways of keeping up with the action? Let us know in comments below — and let’s be nice about which teams we support, alright?