How Google Cloud is helping during COVID-19

We’re all in the midst of an extraordinary moment—not only for our teams, colleagues, and customers, but for the world at large. The impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has created many new challenges, and for many of us, has required that we adopt new ways of working. All over the world, businesses and users depend on Google Cloud to help them stay connected and get work done. And we take this responsibility very seriously. Today, I want to share many of the ways we’re working to support businesses, government institutions, researchers and one another.As more and more businesses rely on connecting an at-home workforce to maintain productivity, we’ve seen surges in the use of Google Meet, our video conferencing product, at a rate we’ve never witnessed before. Over the last few weeks, Meet’s day-over-day growth surpassed 60%, and as a result, its daily usage is more than 25 times what it was in January. Despite this growth, the demand has been well within the bounds of our network’s ability.Because we know how critical keeping colleagues connected and engaged is for business continuity, we’ve made the advanced features in Google Meet free to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally. We’ve also made Meet Hardware available in additional markets, including South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and South Africa, to ensure customers have the right hardware to complement their Meet solution.