Google will reportedly ask its employees to work from home until July 2021.
This decision will affect almost all of the 200,000 employees across business owned by Google parent company, Alphabet, according to the Wall Street Journal. Alphabet announced the decision to employees last week after CEO Sundar Pichai made the call following meetings with execs at the company, according to the report.
Earlier this year, Google employees were informed they were allowed to work from home until July but after the number of cases in the United States increased, the company reportedly pushed that start date back once again to September 2020.
Now, with a massive new wave of coronavirus outbreaks in several states — especially near Google’s headquarters in the Bay Area — a return to the office has been pushed back even further.
While Google is the first major tech corporation to finalize such an extended coronavirus timetable, other tech competitors that have announced earlier returns to the office are likely to follow their lead.
California leads the country in confirmed COVID-19 cases, with San Francisco Bay postponing its reopening measures until the virus is under control.