You Can Now Search for In-Game NFL Video Highlights on Google — Tech Roundup

It wasn't long ago that Twitter (TWTR) - Get Report was in the news for grabbing a deal with the National Football League, and now Alphabet's (GOOGL) - Get Reportexpanding its deal with the league, too.

Rather than forcing consumers to YouTube (which it owns) or other sites, Google will provide live, in-game highlights right on its homepage when users begin searching for specific games. 

This is actually a big step forward and with the NFL's partnership with Twitter, it's quite obvious the tech world is looking to attract and engage users via sports, particularly football.

Of course, Google has a partnership with Twitter as well, which allows users to search for specific subjects or events and have the real-time results populate from Twitter.

So Twitter's a double-winner? Maybe. But it's clear that video is playing a bigger and bigger role in the tech world these days. With YouTube's massive size, scale and user base, it could begin streaming video or live video in the not-too-distant future.

Given the advances that Netflix (NFLX) - Get Report and Hulu have made in streaming, and how Twitter's Periscope and Facebook (FB) - Get Report Live have climbed quickly in popularity when it comes to live video, it wouldn't be surprising to see YouTube's move come sooner, rather than later.

Shares of Alphabet closed at $728.07 Thursday, down 0.3%.

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The one problem with data storage could boil down a simple issue: Outages. Experienced firsthand, Salesforce.com (CRM) - Get Report had one of its data centers go down for a whole day earlier this week, causing it to lose some of its customers' data.

It may sound minor, but it's actually a big deal for several companies. First, a cloud outage lasting for that long almost never happens anymore. In fact, anyone who has been a Salesforce customer over the past few years has probably never experienced an outage even close to this.

Second, it's not just that customers couldn't log on and complete their work - Salesforce had to reset the servers to the most recent outage time. The move wiped out four hours worth of its customers' transaction.

The outcome couldn't have been much worse, really. Aside from wiping out even more data than it already did. The issue does come as a surprise - even if only temporary - because of the high regard that Salesforce is held in.

Given that it's such a temporary event, investors are apparently fine with overlooking it, as the stock was actually up 0.1% to $75.89 on Thursday. Shares are up 2.2% on the week, too.

The stock's price action is perhaps a bit surprising though, considering high-growth stocks haven't fared particularly well in this environment.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.