Iran Press/America: 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, according to Associated Press.
“I know this extended timeline may come with mixed emotions and I want to make sure you’re taking care of yourselves,” wrote Pichai, who is also Alphabet’s CEO, in an email to employees.
Pichai’s decision was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The prolonged lockdown of Google’s offices could influence other major employers to take similar precautions, given that the technology industry has been at the forefront of the shift to remote work that has been triggered by the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Even before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, Google and many other prominent tech firms had been telling their employees to work from home.
But new guidelines mean Google″s biggest offices will remain largely unoccupied through June 2021. The decision affects more than 123,000 employees on the payroll of Google and other Alphabet companies, as well as 80,000 contractors that normally work on the companies’ campuses.
The pandemic has also prompted several other tech companies to inform their workers they won’t have to return to work this year. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken the most extreme step so far by telling the messaging service’s employees they will never have to return to the office, if they don’t want, an offer he is also extending to workers at Square, a payment processing service that he also runs.
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