As the COVID-19 crisis intensifies, Google Hangouts will offer free upgrades for G Suite users seeking to evade the virus, Google reported in a blog post (via AndroidPolice).
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“As more businesses adjust their work-from-home policies and adopt reduced travel plans in response to COVID-19, we’re helping to ensure that all globally distributed teams can still reliably meet face to face, even if employees are not in the same location,” Google said. Starting this week, the tech giant will roll out the red carpet for G Suite and G Suite for Education customers, offering extra features such as larger meetings (up to 250 participants per call), live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers per domain, and the ability to record and save meetings to Google Drive. These free upgrades, typically only available to G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education members, won’t last for long; access to these extra features will last until July 1, 2020. This news comes on the heels of big-name companies seeking remote solutions to curtail the COVID-19 crisis, including Nvidia – the GPU giant that transformed its GTC developer event of 10,000 participants into a livestream-only event – and Twitter’s work-from-home announcement for employees. “Out of an abundance of caution and care, both @Twitter and @Square are taking significant measures to help lower the probability of spread of #coronavirus #covid19, including strongly encouraging all of our employees globally to work from home if able,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote earlier this week. To date, according to CNN, there are more than 90,000 global cases of coronavirus and it has caused more than than 3,100 deaths. Coronavirus has heavily impacted the tech industry, wreaking havoc on events such as the Mobile World Congress, Facebook’s F8 developer conference and the Game Developers Conference, and at this rate, we expect the virus to continue its disruptive rampage on workplaces all around the world. For more information about the virus, including the best ways to protect yourself, visit cdc.gov.
