With the Covid-19 outbreak, we can see a lot of people and businesses suffering. From communities to businesses around the world, everyone is highly affected in one of the worst ways possible, specially, small and medium sized businesses who have no way of actually reaching out to their customers.
Google has announced a new commitment worth over $800 million to support not only small and medium sized businesses (SMEs), but also health organizations, governments, and health workers who are all facing the pandemic. In order to support the SMEs, Google is providing $340 million in Google Ads to all SMEs that have had active accounts in the last year (since the beginning or 2019). If the above criteria is met, credit notifications will appear in the Google Ads section of the account and the business can use them across Google’s advertising platforms, any time up until the end of 2020. As explained by Google and Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai, this is to “help to alleviate some of the cost of staying in touch with their customers.”
In order to help the WHO and over 100 other government agencies around the world to “provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other measures to help local communities”, Google announced its commitment of $250 million (up from the $25 million already announced last month) in ad grants.
Furthermore, Google has pledged $20 million in “ad grants to community financial institutions and NGOs specifically to run public service announcements on relief funds and other resources for SMEs,” in addition to $200 million to support NGOs and financial institutions globally, “to help provide small businesses with access to capital.”
The above is a welcome addition to the $15 million in cash grants that Google.org is providing non-profit organizations in order to help cover these gaps for SMEs. It doesn’t end here, Google also announced $20 million in Google Cloud credits, especially set aside to be used by researchers and academic institutions for “computing capabilities and infrastructure as they study potential therapies and vaccines, track critical data, and identify new ways to combat COVID-19.”
With this we can see how Google is playing a very efficient part in doing their best to not just help fight the pandemic, but also help the community and SMEs around the world to survive during this crisis.
