Google grants free access to its professional tools to help in the coronavirus crisis
Google has announced its plan to help businesses and educational institutions that are being affected by the coronavirus and have taken steps to work remotely. To help keep them in touch, they have decided to temporarily democratize access to their video conferencing and productivity tools. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, has shared on his Twitter account the measures included in this company plan to help in the health crisis.
We want to help businesses and schools impacted by COVID-19 stay connected: starting this week, we’ll roll out free access to our advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally. https://t.co/OWWF7s5jjR
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) March 3, 2020
- The measure wants to contribute to maintaining contact in business and educational institutions remotely
- Hangouts Meet and Google Classroom applications will be free until next July
Mainly the company is about granting free access to its Hangouts Meet and Google Classroom remote work tools, which until now were only available in the business and education editions of its G Suite. The measure will continue until July 1.
The features of these applications will allow students and employees to work face to face from different locations; with video calls of up to 250 participants and live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers, in addition to the possibility of recording and storing them in the cloud.
Google has ensured that the company is “committed to our users and customers in these tough times” and continues to improve its infrastructure to support demand and access to these services during this period of time.
The technology company had been observing in recent weeks that in Honk Kong and Vietnam, where several schools have been closed, many students were using their tools to continue their education from their homes. Also, businesses and companies have begun to adopt remote work measures and canceling trips for meetings and conferences due to the spread of the virus.
