Maps that bring us closer, even when we’re apart

With much of the world physically apart right now, people are finding creative ways to use custom-built maps to maintain a shared sense of community, albeit virtually.


In 2007, we launched a tool called My Maps to help people create their own custom maps on top of Google Maps. With a simple drag-and-drop interface you can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos. You can share your map via public URL, embed it on websites or publish your map for others to see.


Over the past four months, we’ve seen a surge in the number of people creating and viewing My Maps. From December 2019 to April 2020, we saw nearly a billion more My Maps creations, edits and views compared to the same time period last year, growing from 2 billion to nearly 3 billion. With My Maps, communities have been sharing helpful, local information in rapidly changing situations—from COVID-19 testing sites and food banks to where first responders can access childcare facilities.


Maps can help us and our communities stay safe

A map can be helpful in ways that a simple list of text is not: it helps us instantly see information in the context of where we are, with the locations of the resources we might need.

My Maps animation

With My Maps, anyone can be a cartographer. People can import their own data into a custom map, similar to how the San Francisco Department of Homelessness & Supportive Housing mapped downtown hand-washing and hygiene stations to support hand hygiene and reduce the spread of COVID-19. With a spreadsheet or KML you can have your own custom map in no time.


Some maps take a bit more than hand-drawn points and polygons. For that, My Maps creators can import their own mapping data and mash it up with other sources. 


For example, the online newspaper Briarcliff Daily Voice created a My Map showing the spread of coronavirus cases in the New York City metropolitan area, using data from three state healthcare agencies and the city’s health department. Pennsylvania.gov has leveraged My Maps to inform Pennsylvanians about coronavirus cases by county. And The Chicago Sun-Times has a map showing where to get tested for coronavirus in the Chicago area.
Food bank

Anyone can be a force for good with simple, easy-to-use maps

In the past few months, we've seen how powerful this small set of relatively simple features can be. People are using My Maps to to be forces for good and coordinate relief efforts.


Map by map, people are connecting each other to resources for caring for ourselves and others, while staying healthy and informed. We’re seeing everyone from members of Congress to local nonprofits use Google My Maps to visualize information like school lunch pick-up spots to the spread of the virus in our communities.


Here are 10 helpful My Maps we’ve seen developed by communities around the world:


  • Massachusetts My Maps

    Massachusetts' Child Nutrition Outreach Program is using My Maps to help families find sites serving meals to children and teens during school closures.

  • Maldives My Maps

    The local Maldives police department thanked a citizen for creating a helpful map that displayed local shops, pharmacies and food businesses by zone. 

  • Ecuador My Maps

    The National Transit Agency of Ecuador is using My Maps to help truck drivers moving food across the country find disinfection points, gas stations, mechanics and other resources to help them on their journey.

  • Taiwan My Maps

    Taiwan's CDC has used My Maps to visualize the traces of confirmed patients in their contact tracing website.

  • Glasglow My Maps

    Urban Roots, a community led environmental charity in Scotland, has been collaborating with the Glasgow Community Food Network map to direct people to food banks and free meals in Glasgow.

  • Philippines My Maps

    In the Philippines, the Department of Transportation is using My Maps to map free hospital shuttle service routes for COVID-19 medical frontliners.

  • Wyoming My Maps

    The Wyoming Department of Family Services created a My Map to guide essential personnel like police officers, doctors, and nurses to childcare facilitiesfor their children whose schools have closed.

  • Australia Clinics My Maps

    In Australia, the New South Wales Ministry of Health has created a map of public COVID-19 clinics up and running across New South Wales.

  • Mississippi My Maps

    Librarians across Mississippi have teamed up to create a map of parking lot WiFi access points.

  • London COVID Support My Maps

    Andy Jeffrey, a freelance developer from London, has developed a map with links and contact details for coronavirus support services, charity organizations and mutual aid groups in North London

Keeping a shared sense of community, even when you're physically apart

As much as these maps are informative and helpful, they’re also uplifting. After a group of Brooklyn, NY moms asked neighbors to put pictures of rainbows in house windows so kids could track them down, one parent created a map showing the rainbows’ locations all over the city and suburbs. Now people worldwide are pitching in and adding their own rainbow locations to the map.

Mapping Rainbows with Google My Maps

If you’d like to experiment with My Maps, we’re putting together tutorials on skills like merging datasets and embedding maps online. Visit the Google Earth Medium channel in the coming weeks to learn more.

Maps that bring us closer, even when we’re apart

With much of the world physically apart right now, people are finding creative ways to use custom-built maps to maintain a shared sense of community, albeit virtually.


In 2007, we launched a tool called My Maps to help people create their own custom maps on top of Google Maps. With a simple drag-and-drop interface you can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos. You can share your map via public URL, embed it on websites or publish your map for others to see.


Over the past four months, we’ve seen a surge in the number of people creating and viewing My Maps. From December 2019 to April 2020, we saw nearly a billion more My Maps creations, edits and views compared to the same time period last year, growing from 2 billion to nearly 3 billion. With My Maps, communities have been sharing helpful, local information in rapidly changing situations—from COVID-19 testing sites and food banks to where first responders can access childcare facilities.


Maps can help us and our communities stay safe

A map can be helpful in ways that a simple list of text is not: it helps us instantly see information in the context of where we are, with the locations of the resources we might need.

My Maps animation

With My Maps, anyone can be a cartographer. People can import their own data into a custom map, similar to how the San Francisco Department of Homelessness & Supportive Housing mapped downtown hand-washing and hygiene stations to support hand hygiene and reduce the spread of COVID-19. With a spreadsheet or KML you can have your own custom map in no time.


Some maps take a bit more than hand-drawn points and polygons. For that, My Maps creators can import their own mapping data and mash it up with other sources. 


For example, the online newspaper Briarcliff Daily Voice created a My Map showing the spread of coronavirus cases in the New York City metropolitan area, using data from three state healthcare agencies and the city’s health department. Pennsylvania.gov has leveraged My Maps to inform Pennsylvanians about coronavirus cases by county. And The Chicago Sun-Times has a map showing where to get tested for coronavirus in the Chicago area.
Food bank

Anyone can be a force for good with simple, easy-to-use maps

In the past few months, we've seen how powerful this small set of relatively simple features can be. People are using My Maps to to be forces for good and coordinate relief efforts.


Map by map, people are connecting each other to resources for caring for ourselves and others, while staying healthy and informed. We’re seeing everyone from members of Congress to local nonprofits use Google My Maps to visualize information like school lunch pick-up spots to the spread of the virus in our communities.


Here are 10 helpful My Maps we’ve seen developed by communities around the world:


  • Massachusetts My Maps

    Massachusetts' Child Nutrition Outreach Program is using My Maps to help families find sites serving meals to children and teens during school closures.

  • Maldives My Maps

    The local Maldives police department thanked a citizen for creating a helpful map that displayed local shops, pharmacies and food businesses by zone. 

  • Ecuador My Maps

    The National Transit Agency of Ecuador is using My Maps to help truck drivers moving food across the country find disinfection points, gas stations, mechanics and other resources to help them on their journey.

  • Taiwan My Maps

    Taiwan's CDC has used My Maps to visualize the traces of confirmed patients in their contact tracing website.

  • Glasglow My Maps

    Urban Roots, a community led environmental charity in Scotland, has been collaborating with the Glasgow Community Food Network map to direct people to food banks and free meals in Glasgow.

  • Philippines My Maps

    In the Philippines, the Department of Transportation is using My Maps to map free hospital shuttle service routes for COVID-19 medical frontliners.

  • Wyoming My Maps

    The Wyoming Department of Family Services created a My Map to guide essential personnel like police officers, doctors, and nurses to childcare facilitiesfor their children whose schools have closed.

  • Australia Clinics My Maps

    In Australia, the New South Wales Ministry of Health has created a map of public COVID-19 clinics up and running across New South Wales.

  • Mississippi My Maps

    Librarians across Mississippi have teamed up to create a map of parking lot WiFi access points.

  • London COVID Support My Maps

    Andy Jeffrey, a freelance developer from London, has developed a map with links and contact details for coronavirus support services, charity organizations and mutual aid groups in North London

Keeping a shared sense of community, even when you're physically apart

As much as these maps are informative and helpful, they’re also uplifting. After a group of Brooklyn, NY moms asked neighbors to put pictures of rainbows in house windows so kids could track them down, one parent created a map showing the rainbows’ locations all over the city and suburbs. Now people worldwide are pitching in and adding their own rainbow locations to the map.

Mapping Rainbows with Google My Maps

If you’d like to experiment with My Maps, we’re putting together tutorials on skills like merging datasets and embedding maps online. Visit the Google Earth Medium channel in the coming weeks to learn more.

Showcasing useful and innovative literacy apps during the COVID-19 school closures

In these unprecedented times, we can feel a little overwhelmed in terms of how to adapt to the new norm, but also how to help those in need. With governments closing schools in more than 190 countries, 91% of the world’s student population is currently out of school, and as such, the health crisis is also turning into an education crisis. In Sub-Saharan Africa, we have more than 160M primary school learners at home at the moment.

At Google, we believe technology can help kids around the world learn how to read and can move us closer to the goal of basic universal literacy. Thanks to the hard work of app developers and nonprofits, we are uniquely positioned to give out-of-school children the opportunity to learn to read and write via smartphone apps. We’re proud to highlight some literacy apps in the Google Play Store that enable a fun and engaged approach to learning.
  • Curious Learning, a nonprofit promoting access to effective literacy content, brings fun and localised language-learning to kids via their app, Feed the Monster. This educational game focuses on phonological awareness, letter recognition, vocabulary and more, and is available in more than 48 languages. By playing the game, kids learn the fundamentals of reading with the help of cute pet monsters that grow into new friends by feeding them letters.
  • Ubongo is a social enterprise producing kids’ educational media for platforms, including apps, TV and radio programmes, in East Africa and beyond. They’ve created fun, locally-made cartoons, featuring characters like Akili, and teach children the basics of the alphabet through playful singing in their apps.
  • Kukua is building a universe of immersive learning experience centered around child heroine Sema (@super_sema_). Spanning apps, books, TV series and more, Sema takes kids on a game-based learning adventure through magical African landscapes. Their apps are highly engaging and teach kids to recognise, distinguish and trace letters in a playful way.
  • Bolo is an AI-enabled, speech-based reading app that encourages children to read aloud. Recently launched in 13 African countries, it will be available in more African countries later this year.

Each of the organisations have bold missions, be it empowering everyone to have the opportunity to learn to read (Curious Learning), helping Africa's children leverage their literacy skills to change lives for the better (Ubongo), or empowering girls and children with the confidence to change the world (Kukua). We want to support them by bringing their apps to parents and children that need them today. 


Over the next 2 to 3 weeks, we are running a literacy awareness campaign on the Google Play Store featured in 10 markets across Africa - Nigeria , Kenya , South Africa , Ghana , Tanzania , Uganda, Rwanda, Niger, DRC and Senegal. It will also be featured in 3 languages - English, French and Swahili. There are thousands of literacy apps on the Play Store and we hope this serves as an effective means for parents and other engaged adults to discover and introduce amazing content on the Play Store to children that need them.


How can you help? By driving awareness of these online learning and literacy apps in these critical times and sharing this post in your social networks, and with friends with young children.


Posted by: Judith Hoffmann, Google Play Merchandising Manager, and Cassandra Mensah-Abrampah, Android Platform Partnerships, Africa.


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Présentation d’applications d’alphabétisation utiles et innovantes suite à la fermeture des écoles en raison du COVID-19

En ces temps sans précédent, il est légitime d’éprouver des difficultés face à la nécessité de s’adapter à cette nouvelle situation, et à celle d’aider ceux qui en ont le plus besoin. Dans plus de 190 pays, les gouvernements ont imposé la fermeture des écoles, 91 % de la population mondiale en âge d’être scolarisée ne va plus à l’école, ajoutant ainsi à la crise sanitaire une crise de l’éducation. L’Afrique subsaharienne compte actuellement plus de 160 millions d’élèves du primaire confinés à la maison.

Chez Google, nous pensons que la technologie peut aider les enfants du monde entier à apprendre à lire et ainsi nous permettre de nous rapprocher de l’objectif d’une alphabétisation pour tous. Grâce aux efforts des développeurs et des organisations à but non lucratif, de par sa position, Google est en mesure d’offrir aux enfants non scolarisés la possibilité d’apprendre à lire et à écrire grâce aux applications sur smartphones. Nous sommes fiers d’annoncer la mise en service de plusieurs applications d’alphabétisation disponibles dans la boutique Google Play qui permettent une approche à la fois ludique et pédagogique de l’apprentissage.
  • Curious Learning, association à but non lucratif qui promeut l’accès à des contenus de qualité, propose aux enfants un apprentissage ludique de leur langue via leur application, Feed the Monster. Ce jeu éducatif disponible dans plus de 48 langues met l’accent sur la perception des sons, la reconnaissance des lettres, le vocabulaire et bien plus encore. Grâce à ce jeu, les enfants apprennent les bases de la lecture avec l’aide de gentils monstres de compagnie qui deviennent de nouveaux amis en leur donnant des lettres.
  • Ubongo est une entreprise sociale qui produit des médias éducatifs pour enfants accessibles via des plateformes, notamment des applications, des programmes de télévision et de radio, en Afrique de l’Est et d’autres régions. Cette entreprise a créé des dessins animés amusants, réalisés localement, mettant en scène des personnages comme Akili qui apprennent aux enfants les bases de l’alphabet au moyen de comptines ludiques accessibles via leurs applications.
  • Kukua construit un univers d’apprentissage immersif centré sur Sema, la petite héroïne (@super_sema_). À travers des applications, des livres, des séries télévisées et d’autres supports, Sema emmène les enfants dans une aventure d’apprentissage par le jeu qui leur fera découvrir la magie des paysages africains. Grâce à leurs applications attrayantes, les enfants apprennent à reconnaître, à distinguer et à tracer les lettres de manière ludique.
  • Issue de l’intelligence artificielle Bolo est une application de lecture basée sur la parole qui encourage les enfants à lire à voix haute. Récemment lancé dans 13 pays africains, celle-ci sera disponible dans d’autres pays du continent dans le courant de l’année.
Chacune de ces organisations s’est donné une formidable mission, qu’il s’agisse de donner à chacun la possibilité d’apprendre à lire (Curious Learning), d’aider les enfants africains à exploiter leurs compétences en lecture et en écriture pour une vie meilleure (Ubongo) ou d’insuffler aux fillettes et aux enfants en général la confiance pour changer le monde (Kukua). Nous voulons les soutenir en mettant leurs applications à portée des parents et des enfants qui en ont besoin aujourd’hui.

Au cours des deux ou trois semaines qui viennent, nous mènerons une campagne de sensibilisation à l’alphabétisation sur la boutique Google Play, qui sera présentée sur dix marchés d’Afrique - Nigeria, Kenya, Afrique du Sud, Ghana, Tanzanie, Ouganda, Rwanda, Niger, RDC et Sénégal. Cette campagne sera diffusée en trois langues - anglais, français et swahili. Il existe des milliers d’applications d’alphabétisation disponibles sur Play Store et nous espérons que cela sera utile aux parents et aux adultes qui souhaitent découvrir et proposer des contenus de qualité aux enfants qui en ont besoin.
Comment pouvez-vous nous aider ? En ces temps de crise, vous pouvez faire connaître ces applications d’apprentissage et d’alphabétisation en ligne et partager ce post sur vos réseaux sociaux et auprès de vos amis qui ont de jeunes enfants.

Publié par : Judith Hoffmann, responsable du merchandising de Google Play, et Cassandra Mensah-Abrampah, Partenariats Plate-forme Android Platform, Afrique.

Google Meet premium video conferencing—free for everyone

Technology that connects us while we're apart helps keep us safe and productive. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the power of video meetings bring us together—whether we’re working with teammates, talking to healthcare professionals, sharing with loved ones, or learning from home. 

Today, we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’veaccelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful. Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to our business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view. 

It’s important that everyone who uses Meet has a secure and reliable experience from the start, so beginning next week, we’ll be gradually expanding its availability to more and more people over the following weeks. This means you might not be able to create meetings at meet.google.com right away, but you can sign up to be notified when it’s available.

MeetInGmail-Telehealth-1779x1095.jpg

Meet operates on a secure foundation, keeping users safe, data secure, and information private—including between patients and caregivers.

Video meetings built on a secure foundation

Meet is designed, built and operated to be secure at scale. Since January, we’ve seen Meet’s peak daily usage grow by 30x. As of this month, Meet is hosting 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adding roughly 3 million new users every day. And as of last week, Meet’s daily meeting participants surpassed 100 million. With this growth comes great responsibility. Privacy and security are paramount, no matter if it’s a doctor sharing confidential health information with a patient, a financial advisor hosting a client meeting, or people virtually connecting with each other for graduations, holidays and happy hours.

Our approach to security is simple: make products safe by default. We designed Meet to operate on a secure foundation, providing the protections needed to keep our users safe, their data secure, and their information private. Here are just a few of our default-on safety measures:

  • We provide a strong set of host controls such as the ability to admit or deny entry to a meeting, and mute or remove participants, if needed. 

  • We do not allow anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings created by individual accounts. 

  • Meet meeting codes are complex by default and therefore resilient to brute-force “guessing.”

  • Meet video meetings are encrypted in transit, and all recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted in transit and at rest.

  • We don’t require plugins to use Meet on the web. It works entirely in Chrome and other modern browsers, so it’s less vulnerable to security threats.

  • On mobile, we have dedicated Google Meet apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

  • Meet users can enroll their account in Google’s Advanced Protection Program—our strongest protections available against phishing and account hijacking.

  • Google Cloud undergoes regular rigorous security and privacy audits for all its services. Our global compliance certifications can help support regulatory requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA, as well as COPPA and FERPA for education. 

  • Your Meet data is not used for advertising, and we don't sell your data to third parties.

We operate a highly secure and resilient private network that encircles the globe and connects our data centers to each other—ensuring that your data stays safe. Trust is built on transparency and we publish the locations of all our data centers. You can learn more about how Meet keeps your video meetings safe in this post.

Free Google Meet accounts for individuals

You can use Meet to schedule, join or start secure video meetings with anyone—for a virtual yoga class, weekly book club, neighborhood meeting, or happy hour with friends. Until now, Meet has only been available as part of G Suite, our collaboration and productivity solution for businesses, organizations and schools. Going forward, Meet will be available to anyone for free on the web at meet.google.com and via mobile apps for iOS or Android. And if you use Google Calendar, you’ll be able to easily start or join from there, too.
Google Meet - Create-New-Meeting_gb.gif

Use your existing Google Account to start a secure meeting in Google Meet

If you have an existing Google Account (for example, if you’re a @gmail.com user), sign in at meet.google.com to get started. If you don’t have a free Google Account, it only takes a minute to create one using your work or personal email address of choice (we require this step as a security measure, and you’ll only need to do this once).

Meetings are limited to 60 minutes for the free product, though we won’t enforce this time limit until after Sept. 30. Creating a trusted meeting space is important, and being mindful when sharing meeting links in public forums can help create a safe experience for all attendees. For more tips on how to use Meet securely and effectively, visit our Help Center. 

Google Meet for groups and teams

Groups within an organization can also use Meet to create video meetings that help coworkers connect one-on-one, collaborate as a team, and more. For organizations that aren’t already G Suite customers, today we’re announcing G Suite Essentials. G Suite Essentials is perfect for teams that need access to Meet’s more advanced features, such as dial-in phone numbers, larger meetings, and meeting recording. G Suite Essentials also includes Google Drive for easy and secure access to all of a team’s content, and Docs, Sheets and Slides for content creation and real-time collaboration. 

Through Sept. 30, we’re providing G Suite Essentials and all of these advanced features free of charge. If you’re interested in G Suite Essentials, complete this form to get in touch with our sales team. 

Google Meet for businesses and organizations

Whether it’s hospitals supporting patients via telehealth, banks working with loan applicants, retailers assisting customers remotely, or manufacturers interacting safely with warehouse technicians, businesses across every industry are using Meet to stay connected. If you’re one of the 6 million companies and organizations that use G Suite to power remote productivity, you already have access to Meet. Admins simply need to enable Meet by following instructions outlined on our Help Center. In the spirit of being helpful during this time, we’re providing three ways for new and current enterprise customers to access Meet through Sept. 30: 

  • Free access to Meet’s advanced features for all G Suite customers, such as the ability to live stream for up to 100,000 viewers within your domain.

  • Free additional Meet licenses for existing G Suite customers without any amendments to their current contract.

  • Free G Suite Essentials for enterprise customers. 

Enterprises can get in touch with our sales team to learn more.
Meet - Live captions.jpg

Google Meet includes live captions powered by Google’s speech recognition technology

Google Meet in schools and higher-ed institutions

Many schools and colleges today use Meet to power secure virtual classes, PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, tutoring, and even school socials. Meet is included in G Suite for Education, which serves more than 120 million students and teachers globally. If your school already uses G Suite for Education, your administrator can enable Meet at no additional cost. If your school doesn’t use G Suite for Education, you can sign up here. To access resources for distance learning, visit Teach from Home.

Our hope is that by making Meet and G Suite more readily available for all, it will be easier to securely stay connected and productive—now and in the future.

Google Meet premium video conferencing—free for everyone

Technology that connects us while we're apart helps keep us safe and productive. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the power of video meetings bring us together—whether we’re working with teammates, talking to healthcare professionals, sharing with loved ones, or learning from home. 

Today, we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’veaccelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful. Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to our business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view. 

It’s important that everyone who uses Meet has a secure and reliable experience from the start, so beginning next week, we’ll be gradually expanding its availability to more and more people over the following weeks. This means you might not be able to create meetings at meet.google.com right away, but you can sign up to be notified when it’s available.

MeetInGmail-Telehealth-1779x1095.jpg

Meet operates on a secure foundation, keeping users safe, data secure, and information private—including between patients and caregivers.

Video meetings built on a secure foundation

Meet is designed, built and operated to be secure at scale. Since January, we’ve seen Meet’s peak daily usage grow by 30x. As of this month, Meet is hosting 3 billion minutes of video meetings and adding roughly 3 million new users every day. And as of last week, Meet’s daily meeting participants surpassed 100 million. With this growth comes great responsibility. Privacy and security are paramount, no matter if it’s a doctor sharing confidential health information with a patient, a financial advisor hosting a client meeting, or people virtually connecting with each other for graduations, holidays and happy hours.

Our approach to security is simple: make products safe by default. We designed Meet to operate on a secure foundation, providing the protections needed to keep our users safe, their data secure, and their information private. Here are just a few of our default-on safety measures:

  • We provide a strong set of host controls such as the ability to admit or deny entry to a meeting, and mute or remove participants, if needed. 

  • We do not allow anonymous users (i.e., without a Google Account) to join meetings created by individual accounts. 

  • Meet meeting codes are complex by default and therefore resilient to brute-force “guessing.”

  • Meet video meetings are encrypted in transit, and all recordings stored in Google Drive are encrypted in transit and at rest.

  • We don’t require plugins to use Meet on the web. It works entirely in Chrome and other modern browsers, so it’s less vulnerable to security threats.

  • On mobile, we have dedicated Google Meet apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

  • Meet users can enroll their account in Google’s Advanced Protection Program—our strongest protections available against phishing and account hijacking.

  • Google Cloud undergoes regular rigorous security and privacy audits for all its services. Our global compliance certifications can help support regulatory requirements such as GDPR and HIPAA, as well as COPPA and FERPA for education. 

  • Your Meet data is not used for advertising, and we don't sell your data to third parties.

We operate a highly secure and resilient private network that encircles the globe and connects our data centers to each other—ensuring that your data stays safe. Trust is built on transparency and we publish the locations of all our data centers. You can learn more about how Meet keeps your video meetings safe in this post.

Free Google Meet accounts for individuals

You can use Meet to schedule, join or start secure video meetings with anyone—for a virtual yoga class, weekly book club, neighborhood meeting, or happy hour with friends. Until now, Meet has only been available as part of G Suite, our collaboration and productivity solution for businesses, organizations and schools. Going forward, Meet will be available to anyone for free on the web at meet.google.com and via mobile apps for iOS or Android. And if you use Google Calendar, you’ll be able to easily start or join from there, too.
Google Meet - Create-New-Meeting_gb.gif

Use your existing Google Account to start a secure meeting in Google Meet

If you have an existing Google Account (for example, if you’re a @gmail.com user), sign in at meet.google.com to get started. If you don’t have a free Google Account, it only takes a minute to create one using your work or personal email address of choice (we require this step as a security measure, and you’ll only need to do this once).

Meetings are limited to 60 minutes for the free product, though we won’t enforce this time limit until after Sept. 30. Creating a trusted meeting space is important, and being mindful when sharing meeting links in public forums can help create a safe experience for all attendees. For more tips on how to use Meet securely and effectively, visit our Help Center. 

Google Meet for groups and teams

Groups within an organization can also use Meet to create video meetings that help coworkers connect one-on-one, collaborate as a team, and more. For organizations that aren’t already G Suite customers, today we’re announcing G Suite Essentials. G Suite Essentials is perfect for teams that need access to Meet’s more advanced features, such as dial-in phone numbers, larger meetings, and meeting recording. G Suite Essentials also includes Google Drive for easy and secure access to all of a team’s content, and Docs, Sheets and Slides for content creation and real-time collaboration. 

Through Sept. 30, we’re providing G Suite Essentials and all of these advanced features free of charge. If you’re interested in G Suite Essentials, complete this form to get in touch with our sales team. 

Google Meet for businesses and organizations

Whether it’s hospitals supporting patients via telehealth, banks working with loan applicants, retailers assisting customers remotely, or manufacturers interacting safely with warehouse technicians, businesses across every industry are using Meet to stay connected. If you’re one of the 6 million companies and organizations that use G Suite to power remote productivity, you already have access to Meet. Admins simply need to enable Meet by following instructions outlined on our Help Center. In the spirit of being helpful during this time, we’re providing three ways for new and current enterprise customers to access Meet through Sept. 30: 

  • Free access to Meet’s advanced features for all G Suite customers, such as the ability to live stream for up to 100,000 viewers within your domain.

  • Free additional Meet licenses for existing G Suite customers without any amendments to their current contract.

  • Free G Suite Essentials for enterprise customers. 

Enterprises can get in touch with our sales team to learn more.
Meet - Live captions.jpg

Google Meet includes live captions powered by Google’s speech recognition technology

Google Meet in schools and higher-ed institutions

Many schools and colleges today use Meet to power secure virtual classes, PTA meetings, parent-teacher conferences, tutoring, and even school socials. Meet is included in G Suite for Education, which serves more than 120 million students and teachers globally. If your school already uses G Suite for Education, your administrator can enable Meet at no additional cost. If your school doesn’t use G Suite for Education, you can sign up here. To access resources for distance learning, visit Teach from Home.

Our hope is that by making Meet and G Suite more readily available for all, it will be easier to securely stay connected and productive—now and in the future.

Get insights and take action on changing customer behavior

With free measurement tools from Google, you can get insights into how customer behavior has changed due to COVID-19 and then take action to update your marketing strategy. Read more to learn about how to get started, and for specific tips to help your business navigate the coming months.

Understand the impact of your Google media 

If you’re running marketing campaigns to drive visits to your website or app, it’s important for these visits to turn into sales. Attribution in Google Ads helps you understand the paths people take to complete a conversion, and then award credit for that conversion to different ads, clicks, and factors along the way.

We recently launched a new look for attribution reports in Google Ads that helps you quickly see how customers interact with your marketing throughout the purchase cycle. This makes it easier for you to then take action in the areas that are driving results.


2020-03-02_Ads_Attribution_Overview_Cards.png

Revamped overview page that displays simplified and intuitive set of attribution reports.

Attribution models give you a deeper understanding of how your ads perform to help you decide where to allocate your marketing investment. One model, data-driven attribution, uses machine learning to determine how much credit to assign to each click on the customer journey, helping it better account for changes in customer behavior during turbulent times. For example, if you're working on behalf of a grocery store experiencing an increase in online orders from mobile devices, data-driven attribution may indicate that your mobile ads are having a greater impact on driving conversions than you realized, giving you the insight you need to optimize your campaign performance. If you’d like to learn which attribution model is right for your business, check out our official guide to attribution modeling.

Measure the online customer journey

The way that your customers interact with you may have changed dramatically in the past few months. Google Analytics can help you measure how those changes have impacted your business through your website or app.

We’ve put together a guide that lists a few reporting shortcuts in Analytics that can help you easily get useful insights. For example, if your business has shifted to online only, you need to make sure you’re converting as many site or app visits into sales as possible. You can use a shortcut to see your weekly conversion rate for the last 60 days and identify areas you might be able to improve upon – without digging through multiple reports in your account.

Visualize trends about your business

With so much changing so rapidly, you’ll want to understand how your business has been impacted. You can use Google Data Studio to help you create a report and visualize the changes that have happened over the past few months. Data Studio is easy to use, anyone on your team can quickly start using it.

If you’ve connected Data Studio to your marketing campaigns, you can use these curated marketing templates to monitor the performance of those campaigns. Let’s say you need to create a report that shows daily online sales from each of your Google Ads campaigns over the last 60 days. You can use one of those templates to quickly build the report and then identify which campaigns are performing best so you can re-allocate your marketing budget to those campaigns.

Keep your website updated 

During this time, you might have different business hours or shipping policies. Instead of having to invest in an additional resource to update your website, you can do it for free with Google Optimize. When you log into your account, you can use a new feature to easily add a message for your customers to the top of your homepage. Either use our templated banner or customize the message by editing the color, size or text.
Frame 6.png

Use our template to post a banner at the top of your website with an important message.

And if you need to make other changes throughout your site, you can still continue to use Optimize to create site personalizations. Optimize users would normally be limited to running 10 site personalizations at once, but we’ve removed that restriction for the next 90 days, until July 31.

All of these products and features are available for free today. We hope they are helpful as you navigate your business through changing times.

Get insights and take action on changing customer behavior

With free measurement tools from Google, you can get insights into how customer behavior has changed due to COVID-19 and then take action to update your marketing strategy. Read more to learn about how to get started, and for specific tips to help your business navigate the coming months.

Understand the impact of your Google media 

If you’re running marketing campaigns to drive visits to your website or app, it’s important for these visits to turn into sales. Attribution in Google Ads helps you understand the paths people take to complete a conversion, and then award credit for that conversion to different ads, clicks, and factors along the way.

We recently launched a new look for attribution reports in Google Ads that helps you quickly see how customers interact with your marketing throughout the purchase cycle. This makes it easier for you to then take action in the areas that are driving results.


2020-03-02_Ads_Attribution_Overview_Cards.png

Revamped overview page that displays simplified and intuitive set of attribution reports.

Attribution models give you a deeper understanding of how your ads perform to help you decide where to allocate your marketing investment. One model, data-driven attribution, uses machine learning to determine how much credit to assign to each click on the customer journey, helping it better account for changes in customer behavior during turbulent times. For example, if you're working on behalf of a grocery store experiencing an increase in online orders from mobile devices, data-driven attribution may indicate that your mobile ads are having a greater impact on driving conversions than you realized, giving you the insight you need to optimize your campaign performance. If you’d like to learn which attribution model is right for your business, check out our official guide to attribution modeling.

Measure the online customer journey

The way that your customers interact with you may have changed dramatically in the past few months. Google Analytics can help you measure how those changes have impacted your business through your website or app.

We’ve put together a guide that lists a few reporting shortcuts in Analytics that can help you easily get useful insights. For example, if your business has shifted to online only, you need to make sure you’re converting as many site or app visits into sales as possible. You can use a shortcut to see your weekly conversion rate for the last 60 days and identify areas you might be able to improve upon – without digging through multiple reports in your account.

Visualize trends about your business

With so much changing so rapidly, you’ll want to understand how your business has been impacted. You can use Google Data Studio to help you create a report and visualize the changes that have happened over the past few months. Data Studio is easy to use, anyone on your team can quickly start using it.

If you’ve connected Data Studio to your marketing campaigns, you can use these curated marketing templates to monitor the performance of those campaigns. Let’s say you need to create a report that shows daily online sales from each of your Google Ads campaigns over the last 60 days. You can use one of those templates to quickly build the report and then identify which campaigns are performing best so you can re-allocate your marketing budget to those campaigns.

Keep your website updated 

During this time, you might have different business hours or shipping policies. Instead of having to invest in an additional resource to update your website, you can do it for free with Google Optimize. When you log into your account, you can use a new feature to easily add a message for your customers to the top of your homepage. Either use our templated banner or customize the message by editing the color, size or text.
Frame 6.png

Use our template to post a banner at the top of your website with an important message.

And if you need to make other changes throughout your site, you can still continue to use Optimize to create site personalizations. Optimize users would normally be limited to running 10 site personalizations at once, but we’ve removed that restriction for the next 90 days, until July 31.

All of these products and features are available for free today. We hope they are helpful as you navigate your business through changing times.

Get to know India’s most iconic artist, explore India’s landmarks and more on Google Arts & Culture

We know that art has the power to encourage and inspire, and during this challenging time, we continue to work with our cultural partners to help them reach audiences online. Whether you’re looking to dive deep into Indian art and culture, looking to virtually visit a famous site or looking to play with some of our experiments, here are some ways you can keep exploring on Google Arts & Culture. 

Discover the comprehensive collection of the artist Raja Ravi Varma

Left to Right:
1. ‘Women holding a Fruit’, by Raja Ravi Varma, from the collection of National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi
2. ‘Rai Pannalal Mehta’, by Raja Ravi Varma, from the collection of The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation
3. ‘Vishnu Garuda Vahan’, in advertisement for jam by C. & E. Morton Ltd. UK, by Ravi Varma Press, from the collection of The Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation 

Today, on the occasion of Raja Ravi Varma’s 172nd birth anniversary, we are proud to launch a comprehensive digital retrospective of his paintings, prints, sketches and rare photographs. These are presented alongside works inspired by the artist - on canvas, textiles, as studio photography and even as matchbox art! The retrospective features more than 30 stories and more than 700 images and videos from nine institutions, including The Raja Ravi Varma Heritage Foundation, National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi, The Ganesh Shivaswamy Foundation and Museum of Art & Photography. “Raja Ravi Varma” shines a spotlight on his work, and offers insights into his rich and varied life. Learn about the legends of Urvashi and Shakuntala, or discover how the Jamdani technique was used to weave intricate Saris in Khadi. 

On this occasion, why not enjoy a special new experience that takes you on a journey through Raja Ravi Varma’s most iconic paintings? Set to music inspired by Indian classical ragas, enjoy meditative experiences that celebrate Ravi Varma’s intrinsic love for musical instruments and melody, as portrayed in many of his paintings.



Explore India’s Landmarks from Home
Left to Right:
1. Palace of Lights, Royal Opera House, Mumbai, from the collection of Royal Opera House
2. The Great Gate, Fatehpur Sikri, by Samuel Bourne, from the collection of Museum of Art & Photography
3. Soona Mahal, Mumbai, from the collection of Art Deco Mumbai Trust

Virtually visit India’s only surviving opera house with 10 breathtaking virtual tours from Royal Opera House, in Mumbai. The building was reopened to the public in 2016 after extensive renovations to restore it to its former glory. Learn more about the Art Deco movement in Mumbai’s architecture design - the precinct which has been accorded UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Take a journey down memory lane with Museum of Art & Photography’s exhibition on the hidden histories of photography covering India’s most iconic sites to lesser known locations.

Left to Right:
1. Ajanta Cave no. 26, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, from Archaeological Survey of India
2. An Indo-Portuguese Goan-style folding chair, from the collection of Museum of Design Excellence

Then, sink into your favourite chair, and travel virtually to the Ajanta World Heritage Site’s Cave 26, to discover the many forms and histories of seating across India with the Museum of Design Excellence.
Experience art in new ways
We are always looking for new ways for people to engage with art through technology. One of our newest features is Art Transfer, that lets you transform your photos influenced by the style characteristics of renowned artists such as Frida Khalo or Leonardo Da Vinci. 

Caption: Explore ‘Art Transfer’ on the Google Arts & Culture App

Family Fun with Arts & Culture is another new resource for families at home to explore art, science, animals, music, books and cultures of the world, while also having fun. All of these features can be enjoyed at home with the Google Arts & Culture app on iOS and Android.

Posted by Simon Rein, Program Manager Google Arts & Culture

Helping you avoid COVID-19 online security risks

As people around the world are staying at home due to COVID-19, many are turning to new apps and communications tools to work, learn, access information, and stay connected with loved ones. 


While these digital platforms are helpful in our daily lives, they can also introduce new online security risks. Our Threat Analysis Group continually monitors for sophisticated hacking activity, and our security systems have detected a range of new scams such as phishing emails posing as messages from charities and NGOs battling COVID-19, directions from “administrators” to employees working from home, and even notices spoofing healthcare providers. During the past couple of weeks across the globe, our advanced machine-learning classifiers have seen 18 million daily malware and phishing attempts related to COVID-19, in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related spam messages. 


To protect you from these risks, we've built advanced security protections into Google products to automatically identify and stop threats before they ever reach you. Our machine learning models in Gmail already detect and block more than 99.9 percent of spam, phishing and malware. The security we have built into Chrome browser also protects you by alerting you before you enter fraudulent websites, Google Play Protect automatically scans apps and data on your Android device so that you have the latest in mobile security, and more. 

But we want to help you stay secure everywhere online, not just on our products, so we’re providing these simple tips, tools and resources.


Know how to spot and avoid COVID-19 scams


With many of the COVID-19 related scams coming in the form of phishing emails, it’s important to pause and evaluate any COVID-19 related email before clicking any links or taking other actions. Be wary of requests for personal information such as your home address or bank details. Fake links often imitate established websites by adding extra words or letters to them—check the URL’s validity by hovering over it (on desktop) or with a long press (on mobile). See the image below for a few key tips to be aware of.
 


These tips are also available online on Google Safety center at g.co/covidsecuritytips in Hindi and English, with more Indian languages being added in the coming weeks. You can also download these tips as handy one-pagers (for Hindi and English.) 




Use a password manager to create and store strong passwords



With all the new applications and services you might be using for work and school purposes, it can be tempting to use just one password for all. To keep your private information private, always use unique, hard-to-guess passwords. A password manager, like the one built into Android, Chrome, and your Google Account can help make this easier.


Protect your Google Account


If you use a Google Account, you can easily review any recent security issues and get personalized recommendations to help protect your data and devices with the Security Checkup. Within this tool, you can also run a Password Checkup to learn if any of your saved passwords for third party sites or accounts have been compromised, and then easily change them if needed.


You should also consider adding two-step verification (also known as two-factor authentication), which you likely already have in place for online banking and other similar services, to provide an extra layer of security. This helps keep out anyone who shouldn’t have access to your accounts by requiring a secondary factor on top of your username and password to sign in. To set this up for your Google Account, go to g.co/2SV. And if you’re someone who is at risk of a targeted attack—like a journalist, activist, politician or a high profile healthcare professional—enroll in the Advanced Protection Program, our strongest security offering, at g.co/advancedprotection.

Our teams continue to monitor the evolving online security threats connected to COVID-19 so that we can keep you informed and protected. For more tips to help you improve your online security, visit our Safety Center.

Posted by Saikat Mitra, Director - Trust & Safety

Alphabet’s Q1 2020 earnings call

Note: These are Sundar Pichai's full remarks from today's Alphabet Q1 2020 earnings call. See below for an email to employees Sundar sent following the call. 

When I last spoke with you in early February, no one could have imagined how much the world would change, and how suddenly.

Our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by COVID-19, especially those who’ve lost loved ones or their livelihoods. It’s a challenging moment for the world. 

Through it all, we’re incredibly grateful for all of the essential workers on the front lines of this crisis... from health care workers and first responders... to the grocery store clerks and delivery workers...to teachers grappling with new technology to help children learn remotely...to all of the scientists and researchers working hard to develop vaccines and treatments...and many others who are leading through these difficult times. Thank you.

These people fill us with hope and show us the power of human resilience. We’ll need that energy and resolve in the months and years ahead. 

Today, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the path to recovery. But there are some things that we can understand better with the patterns we are seeing.

  • For example, it’s clear from data that people are being more cautious and are seeking authoritative advice and guidance to protect their families’ health and safety. A return to normal economic activity depends on how effectively societies manage the spread of the virus. There’s no one size fits all and the timing and pace of recovery will vary from location to location. This is a long-term effort.

  • It’s also clear that this is the first major pandemic taking place in a digital world.Many parts of the economy are also able to continue with some semblance of normalcy, thanks to advances in remote work, online shopping, delivery options, home entertainment and telemedicine. At the same time, newer technologies like AI, Bluetooth exposure notifications and 3D printing are being used to help fight the disease head on. 

  • It’s now clear that once the emergency has passed, the world will not look the same.Some social norms will change, and many businesses are speaking to us, looking to reinvent their operations. We have seen that the most pressing concern of small and large businesses right now is business continuity, solving for issues like employee safety, dramatic falls or surges in demand, supply chains and managing a remote workforce. Ultimately, we’ll see a long-term acceleration of movement from businesses to digital services, including increased online work, education, medicine, shopping and entertainment. These changes will be significant, and lasting.

Given the depth of the challenges so many are facing, it’s been a huge privilege to be able to help people and businesses at this moment. In today’s call, I’ll cover four areas:

  • First, I’ll mention some of the ways we have marshalled our resources and product development to help.

  • Second, I’ll talk about how people are using our products at this unprecedented moment. 

  • Third, I’ll talk about our business—especially our advertising business which was significantly impacted in the last few weeks of the quarter.

  • And I’ll close with our investment plans and focus for the rest of the year. 

In the early days of the crisis, we were able to put in motion a number of efforts quickly. This is a testament to strategic areas where we have invested over recent years: products that people trust; our technical leadership and innovation; deep partnerships; a highly skilled workforce; and the scale and resilience of our operations. 

I’ve been proud of all of these efforts and what they say about our company. I’ll give just a few examples.

First, we’ve been working with healthcare providers, researchers, authorities and communities to help combat the virus.

  • Our community mobility reports help authorities see, in aggregate, how social distancing requirements are working. 

  • Verily has tested thousands of people in California and has partnered with Rite Aid to bring free testing to eight additional states.

  • Google Cloud is forming deep partnerships, such as with leading health care provider HCA Healthcare, to understand data around ICU bed availability, ventilator supplies and test results. 

  • And you may have read about our exposure notification partnership with Apple, designed specifically and carefully to protect users’ privacy while helping public health authorities and governments manage countries’ re-opening.

Second, we are working hard to provide accurate and authoritative information to people using our services. 

  • In Search, we've launched a number of features such as up-to-date answers from health authorities, and remote medical care options. 

  • On YouTube, we are quickly removing content that violates policy, and raising authoritative content from news organizations and experts. Up to last week, our COVID-19 info panels have had 20 billion impressions.

Third, we’re playing a role in supporting businesses and workers that are hurting because of the downturn. 

  • In March, we made a commitment upwards of $800 million to support small businesses and crisis response efforts, through a combination of grants, small business loans and ad credits. 

  • And the Google News Initiative is offering financial support to thousands of small, medium and local news publishers through a Journalism Emergency Relief Fund. We’ve also waived ad serving fees for news publishers globally on Ad Manager for the next five months.

Turning to the way people are using our products... 

People are relying on Google’s services more than ever. This is a strong recognition of the value of our products, particularly in important and urgent moments. As a few examples: 

  • We’ve seen a significant rise in search activity. To put it into perspective, in the U.S., coronavirus-related search activity at its peak was four times greater than during the peak of the Super Bowl. 

  • People are spending significantly more time on their Android apps, with downloads of apps from Google Play rising 30 percent from February to March.

  • YouTube watchtime has also significantly increased. One area in particular is livestreams. I hope you saw Andrea Bocelli on YouTube Live on Easter, which has had over 39 million views. It was truly beautiful.

  • 100 million students and educators are using Google Classroom, double the number from the beginning of March. 

  • We've seen a massive increase in demand for Chromebooks; analysts have reported a 400 percent increase during the week of March 21 year over year. 

  • And schools and businesses in particular are using our secure video conferencing platform Meet. Last week, we surpassed a significant milestone and are now adding roughly 3 million new users each day, and have seen a 30-fold increase in usage since January. There are now over 100 million daily Meet meeting participants. Stay tuned for much more!

Turning to our business, let me touch on our performance this quarter.

Q1 was in many ways the tale of two quarters. For our advertising business, the first two months of the quarter were strong. 

In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenues. The timing of the slowdown correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders. 

As the impact of COVID-19 came into view, we delayed some ad launches and prioritized supporting our customers as many adjusted their strategies. 

We're focused on products where we can help most advertisers and merchants during the crisis. For example, under our new leader of Commerce, Bill Ready, last week we announced that merchants can list products in Google Shopping for free. It’s been widely rolled out in the U.S., with more countries to come, and the response has been positive. 

Overall, recovery in ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity. 

There are two key aspects of our business that give us confidence about the future:

  • First, as we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of Search is that it can be adjusted quickly, so it’s relatively easier to turn off and then back on, and marketers see it as highly cost-effective and ROI based. 

  • Second, our business is more diversified than it was in 2008. 

For example, Cloud:

  • In the public sector, we are helping governments deliver critical health and social services. We’re supporting the State of New York’s new online unemployment application system as it deals with a significant increase in demand. 

  • In retail, we’ve helped Loblaw, one of Canada’s largest food retailers, and Wayfair scale to support exponential traffic increases. 

  • We are helping communication companies adapt to new behavior patterns. Vodafone is using Google Cloud Platform to help it analyze network traffic flows to keep everyone connected and we are helping Unity Technologies keep real-time online games stay up and running. 

  • Institutions like Lloyd's Bank are digitally transforming their businesses and we are helping even more businesses do the same through new partnerships with Accenture, AT&T, and T-Systems.

  • We now have more than 6 million paying G Suite customers. G Suite is helping Netflix and German manufacturer, KAESER Compressors transition quickly to remote work, while Twitter, Shopify, retailer Schnuks and Italian bank Credem are using Meet for things like all hands and customer meetings. 

Elsewhere across the business...

  • YouTube subscriptions continue to grow. The team has launched YouTube Kids in 15 new countries around the world since the beginning of the year, and rolled out new features to make kids-focused channels safer. 

  • Android previewed Android 11, which includes seamless 5G connectivity and a smarter keyboard with a faster messaging experience. And as I mentioned, we’ve seen significant growth in Play. There are now over 2.5 billion monthly active Play devices worldwide. 

  • And in hardware, we saw a decline in device activations in the quarter, due to falling consumer demand globally. But I am excited about the product roadmap ahead for the year—including yesterday’s launch of Pixel Buds 2. 

Finally, moving on to our focus for the rest of the year...

We’re taking a long view and continuing to invest in our long-term priorities, but are being thoughtful in the short term. So we made the decision to slow down the pace of hiring for the remainder of 2020, while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas. We’re also recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel. 

We’ll also continue to thoughtfully manage our Other Bets portfolio. Waymo raised $2.25 billion in its first external investment round, a terrific validation of their technology and long-term business model. Wing saw a surge in deliveries and new users, increasing its daily volume fivefold, with great momentum in test programs in Australia and Virginia.

At Google, we’ll continue to be focused on the four key areas that I outlined in the last earnings call. 

  • First, creating the most helpful products for everyone, particularly at a time where people rely on us for information, work, education and entertainment. 

  • Second, providing the most trusted experiences for our users. This includes our efforts to tackle misinformation and digital threats, as well as our work to safeguard consumer privacy.

  • Third, executing at scale. I’ve been proud of how we continue to work so cohesively and productively, even with a distributed workforce. We will continue to build on the internal tools, support systems and infrastructure we have built over the years. 

  • And finally, creating sustainable value. We’ll be optimizing the way our data centers work, and prioritizing strategic areas of investment where we need to support our users and partners. 

Let me express my thanks to our employees for their herculean efforts under these difficult circumstances. While the road ahead for everyone is uncertain, we’ll continue to support our users, communities and partners, and we’ll all emerge, together, from this moment.

Thank you, and please take care, everyone.

The following is an email to employees that Sundar sent today.

Hi everyone, 


Earlier today, Ruth and I wrapped our 2020 Q1 earnings call with investors. I was proud to share some of the ways we’ve come together as a company to help people and businesses during this time—thank you all for your efforts. 


I’ve included my opening remarks from the call below. The TL;DR is that Alphabet’s Q1 was a tale of two quarters. On the one hand, we’ve seen people turning to some of our products for help more than ever. This is reflected in the rise in Search activity, engagement on YouTube, downloads on Google Play and usage of G Suite.


The first two months of the quarter were strong for our Search, network and YouTube businesses. Then, in March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in our advertising revenues, correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders. 


As I mentioned on the call, recovery in ad spend will depend on a return to economic activity. That said, there are two key aspects of our business that give us confidence about the future: First, as we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of Search Ads is they are cost-effective and can be adjusted quickly, so it’s comparatively easy to turn them off and then back on. Second, our business is more diversified than it was in 2008, and we are excited about the momentum in areas like YouTube, Cloud, Google Play and our computing efforts. We’re equally excited about the growth we’re seeing across Chromebooks and G Suite, particularly in Meet and Classroom, as more businesses and schools transition to remote work and learning. All of this will help us emerge from this period in a strong position.


I also spent some time on the call sharing observations about the patterns we’re seeing from the first pandemic of the digital era. While technology has allowed certain types of businesses to continue working as before, we can’t expect the world to snap back into place in a single day—this is a long-term effort. And when the crisis does pass, the world won’t look exactly as it did before the pandemic. This provides an opportunity for all of us to help people reimagine everything, from online work to education, to medicine and entertainment.


Overall, we made some good progress this quarter in spite of all the challenges. None of it would be possible without the herculean efforts from Googlers around the world. Thank you for everything you do to continue to support our users, customers, partners, and communities. We will get through this together. 


-Sundar