Google recommends all North American employees work remotely until at least April 10
New York (CNNBusiness)Google parent company Alphabet is recommending that all of its North America employees work from home through April 10 due to coronavirus, according to an email shown to CNN.
CNNClare Duffy
Context & Ripple Effects
Google's April 10 recommendation lands one day after the company told employees in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to start working from home on March 12 — making remote work the default across Alphabet's Western footprints within 48 hours of each other.
All of Alphabet's North American employees shift to recommended remote work through April 10, joining EMEA staff who began working from home on March 12.
Second-order effects
Outsourced workforces are exposed as the exception: Facebook's stance that its Accenture and Wipro contractors cannot work from home creates a two-tier standard across big tech, where employment status determines pandemic flexibility.
Third-order effects
What began as an April 10 deadline became a year-plus commitment spanning roughly 200,000 Google full-time and contract employees — signaling that large tech employers treat extended remote work as sustainable operating policy, not a temporary measure.
The trend: Big tech is converting emergency coronavirus work-from-home guidance into long-duration default policy, while contractor-heavy segments of the same workforce are excluded from it.
Contributing to social distancing if you are able to, helps the overall community spread and most importantly, will help offset the peak loads through critical healthcare systems and also saves it for people in need. (based on expert advice). Please contribute if you are able to …
Confirmed — Google is recommending *all* of its North American employees work from home due to #coronavirus concerns. Biggest company to do this so far. Parent company Alphabet has more than 100,000 employees most of whom work in the US.
“Our goal is to reduce the density of people in offices, which expert advice suggests may slow down the spread of #COVID-19 and reduce the burden on the local community and health resources.” - @Google https://www.cnbc.com/...
Scoop: Google is now recommending all of its tens of thousands of North American employees work from home due to COVID-19. It's one of the biggest remote-work orders by any company to date. https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
This is what corporate responsibility looks like. And y'all KNOW how I feel about Google. Maybe they're trying to reclaim their old motto: don't be evil. https://twitter.com/...