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Google is committing over $800 million to support health organizations and workers, small- and medium-sized businesses, and governments, to battle the global coronavirus pandemic.
The tech giant’s CEO Sundar Pichai made the announcement on Friday.
“Together, we’ll continue to help our communities—including our businesses, educators, researchers and nonprofits—to navigate the challenges ahead,” Pichai said in a press statement.
The initiative includes $250 million in ad grants to help the World Health Organization and more than 100 government agencies globally provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other measures to help local communities — a significant increase from the company’s previously announced $25 million commitment last month.
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Google will create a $200 million investment fund that will support NGOs and financial institutions worldwide to help provide small businesses with access to capital amid the economic fallout from the pandemic.
The search giant is providing $340 million in Google Ads credits to small and medium-sized businesses with active accounts over the past year as a way to alleviate some of the cost of staying in touch with customers.
In addition, the California-based company is working to provide first responders and medical workers with access to more personal protective equipment (PPE). Shortages in these critical materials have been happening in hospitals across the country. Google is working with Magid Glove & Safety with the goal of ramping up production of 2 to 3 million face masks in the coming weeks.
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Employees from across Alphabet, including Google, Verily and X, are using their engineering, supply chain and healthcare expertise to facilitate increased production of ventilators, working with manufacturers, distributors and the government in that effort.
Silicon Valley has been stepping up in a range of ways to assist with production or donation of masks and ventilators and in other ways.
