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Google to keep most of its employees at home until July 2021
FILE - This March 19, 2018 file photo shows a Google app in Baltimore. Apple and Google launched a major joint effort, Friday, April 10, 2020, to leverage smartphone technology contain the COVID-19 pandemic. New software the companies plan to add to phones would make it easier to use Bluetooth wireless technology to track down people who may have been infected by coronavirus carriers.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Google has decided that most of its 200,000 employees and contractors should work from home through next June. It's a sobering assessment of the pandemic's potential staying power from the company that provides the answers for the world's most trusted internet search engine.
The remote-work order issued Monday by Google CEO Sundar Pichai also affects other companies owned by Google's corporate parent, Alphabet Inc. It marks a six-month extension of Google's previous plan to keep most of its offices closed through the rest of this year.
The prolonged lockdown of Google's offices could influence other major employers to take similar precautions.
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Data from The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.