Google extends work from Home until July 2021: ‘Want to make sure you’re taking care’

Is the global Coronavirus tally reached 16,642,264, Google has decided that most of its 200,000 employees and contractors should work from home at least till June 2021. 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.

In an email to employees.“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. Besides helping protect people from the virus, the new July 2021 target date for reopening Google’s offices should make it easier for workers with children to adjust to schools that aren’t allowing students to return to campus next month and in September. It will also make it easier for employees to sign one-year leases if they decide to rent a home somewhere else while working outside the office, Pichai added. Pichai’s email noted that Google and Alphabet have been able to reopen some offices in 42 countries, although he didn’t specify which.

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. Google had originally planned to allow a significant number of employees to begin returning to its Mountain View, California, headquarters and other offices during the summer. But the pandemic’s ongoing spread prompted Google to push back the reopening until January and now it has prompted yet another delay.