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London 2012 soccer: How to play and beat Google

Challenge your friends and coworkers with Google's soccer game in honor of the London 2012 Olympic games.

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Google
London 2012 soccer: Challenge your friends to a game on Google's homepage.
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Rich Clabaugh/Staff

The Google home page on Friday has another big time-waster to bring down office productivity.

As the London 2012 Olympic games are coming to a close with only three days left, so does the Olympic banter with our colleagues, friends, and family.

The second week of the Olympics has been exciting watching our favorite teams and athletes represent their home country with pride and compete for the dream of winning gold, silver, and bronze medals. It was exciting when U.S. women's soccer player Alex Morgan's header was the winning goal on Monday with 30 seconds left in the semifinal against Canada. 

On Tuesday, down to the last day of gymnastics, watching American Aly Raisman win on floor exercise, as she had dreamed of most of all, was amazing. As Monitor staff writer Mark Sappenfield reports, "Today has been a dream come true," she said. "I'm so glad I got the medal I wanted."

And after Jamaican Usain Bolt won the 100-meters on Sunday, all eyes were on the 200-meter dash Thursday night to see what Bolt would do next. As he crossed the finish line first in 19.32 seconds, he became the first man to win both the 100 and 200 consecutively at the Summer Games.

To celebrate the Olympic games Google-style, today's interactive-doodle features soccer, complete with goal keeper, goal scorer, and scoreboard.  

Here's your chance to claim a gold medal all your own, with a link to share your results on the search engine's very own social network, Google+.

The rules are simple - to block the ball from going into the net, there are two possible ways to do so:

  1. Use the left and right arrow keys to move your keeper from side to side. To catch a high ball, press the space bar. 
  2. Sliding the mouse side-to-side moves the goal keeper, click and you will jump to make that save.

As in a real-live soccer match, timing is everything. 

Each time you miss the ball an X will appear on the top left of the screen, your score is on the top right, if you get 3 X's the game is over. 

If the boss still isn't looking, then it's time for a rematch.

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Still interested in playing any of Google's Olympic games from earlier in the week? You still can! What was your favorite: Hurdles, basketball, or the slalom canoe? Let us know in the comments below.

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