Google Coronavirus Website is Now Live
Google launched a website dedicated to information about Covid-19 a week after U.S. President Donald Trump touted the company’s help in the fight against the pandemic.
Google has worked with relevant agencies and authorities to roll out a website—available at google.com/covid19—focused on education, prevention and local resources. People can find state-based information, safety and prevention tips, search trends related to COVID-19, and further resources for individuals, educators and businesses. Launched today in the U.S., the site will be available in more languages and countries in the coming days and Google will update the website as more resources become available.
At the top of the site, there’s an information box describing virus symptoms, treatment and prevention tips from the World Health Organization. Google also included links to state departments of health across the U.S., search trends related to Covid-19, and other resources for individuals, educators and businesses.
Under a resources tab on the left of Google’s site, the company linked to many of its own services. A section for teachers on how to instruct students from home listed company offerings such as Google Classroom, Google Docs and Google Hangouts.
On March 13, Trump said Alphabet Inc.’s Google had roughly 1,700 engineers working on a virus website. Verily, a health-care unit of Alphabet, has rolled out a triage website that offers a limited number of virus tests in Silicon Valley.
The company introduced a more comprehensive experience for COVID-19 in Search, providing easy access to authoritative information from health authorities alongside new data and visualizations. This new format organizes the search results page to help people easily navigate information and resources, and it will also make it possible to add more information over time as it becomes available.
In addition to links to resources from national and local health authorities, people will also find a carousel of Twitter accounts from local civic organizations and health authorities to help connect them with the latest local guidance as it’s shared. Google has also introduced a feature to surface some of the most common questions about the pandemic, with relevant snippets sourced from the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
To help people track the latest information about the spread of the disease, Gogole is adding modules with statistics and a map showing COVID-19 prevalence in countries around the world. This new COVID-19 experience on Search will roll out in the coming days in English in the U.S., and Google plans to add more information and expand to other languages and countries soon.
Annual developer conference cancelled
Google also on Friday canceled its annual developer conference, two weeks after calling off the in-person portion of the event due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In contrast, Apple has moved its upcoming developers conference to online-only format.