Tag: Covid-19

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YouTube warns of increased video removals during COVID-19 crisis

YouTube today warned its creator community that video removals may increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said its systems today rely on a combination of technology followed by human review. But the current health crisis is leading to reduced in-office staffing in certain sites, which means automated systems will be removing some YouTube content without human review.

Today, YouTube utilizes machine learning technology to flag potentially harmful content, which is then sent to human moderators for review. But because of the measures YouTube is taking to protect staff, it’s planning to rely more on technology than on people in the weeks ahead.

“We have teams at YouTube, as well as partner companies, that help us support and protect the YouTube community—from people who respond to user and creator questions, to reviewers who evaluate videos for possible policy violations,” YouTube explained in its announcement. “These teams and companies are staffed by thousands of people dedicated to helping users and creators. As the coronavirus response evolves, we are taking the steps needed to prioritize the well-being of our employees, our extended workforce, and the communities where they live, including reducing in-office staffing in certain sites.”

YouTube says allowing its technology to remove some content without human review, will allow it to work more quickly to take down potential violations and keep the ecosystem protected.

However, automated technology is not perfect. Many videos will likely be impacted by this shift away from human moderation. And videos may be removed even though their content wasn’t actually against YouTube policy. In those cases, video creators are being asked to appeal the decision, which will allow YouTube’s remaining moderators to take a look at the video in question and make a decision.

Because of these complications, YouTube informs creators they won’t be punished with strikes except in cases where YouTube has “high confidence” that the video content was in violation.

In addition, the company says it will also be more careful about which content gets promoted, including livestreams. Some unreviewed content may not be available in search, on the homepage, or in recommendations, either.

YouTube last week had said it would allow creators to monetize their videos about the novel coronavirus. Previously, those videos were a part of its advertising guidelines’ policy that prevented monetization of videos about “sensitive events” — like mass shootings, natural disasters, or, until now, health crises. YouTube’s original policy was written to protect advertisers from having their brands next to exploitative videos that were capitalizing on some sort of human tragedy for views. But YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said the company chose to re-open monetization on coronavirus videos because the topic was now an important part of everyday conversation — not a short-term even of a significant magnitude.

Today’s news, however, may put a damper on the creator community’s interest in making videos about the COVID-19 pandemic in the hopes of gaining more views for their channel. Creators will likely worry about their videos being suppressed by YouTube’s algorithms or even mistakenly removed. And videos may be stuck in a lengthier-than-usual appeals process given the reduced staffing.

YouTube additionally warned other areas of its business could also be affected going forward, including YouTube user and creator support and reviews, applications for the YouTube Partner Program, and even responses on social media channels.

It advised creators to watch the YouTube help center for further changes to the service.

“We recognize this may be a disruption for users and creators, but know this is the right thing to do for the people who work to keep YouTube safe and for the broader community. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we take these steps during this challenging time,” said YouTube.

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WHO calls for rapid escalation in global COVID-19 response, including testing and isolation

The World Health Organization (WHO) held a briefing today for media to update them on the current status of the global pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and called out worldwide efforts on what the agency’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom described as not an “urgent enough”  response in terms of fielding a truly comprehensive approach.

In prepared remarks to kick-off the media Q&A, Adhanom said that while to date we have “seen a rapid escalation in social distancing measures, like closing schools and cancelling spring events,” there still hasn’t been enough done on a global level in terms of “testing, isolation and contact tracing,” which he said formed the “backbone of the response.”

“You cannot fight a fire blindfolded,” Adhnom said. “And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected. We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case. If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with up to 2 days before they developed symptoms, and test those people too.”

The agency noted that it has shipped a total of 1.5 million tests to 120 countries thus far. The U.S. in particular has lagged behind its global peers when it comes to testing, with the country refusing the WHO tests offered and opting instead to develop its own CDC-developed tests, whose initial rollout met with mirrors. Based on data from last week, the U.S., even now that private lab tests are coming online to attempt to supplement the CDC-issued ones, the country is still far behind Japan, the UK, Italy, China, South Korea and many others when it comes to testing on a per capita basis compared to its population.

Adhanom went on to advise that all confirmed cases be isolated once identified, in health facilities if possible, but in either makeshift facilities set up for the purpose if that’s not an option, or for those with very mild symptoms, at home. He clarified this meant that care-givers treating people at home should wear a medical mask when they occupy shared space, and that the patient should both sleep separately and use a different bathroom.

“Once again, our key message is: test, test, test,” Adhanom said. “This is a serious disease. Although the evidence we have suggests that those over 60 are at highest risk, young people, including children, have died.”

He also pointed out that while we’re now seeing epidemics even in developed countries with advanced health care systems and institutions in place, facing significant challenges, there’s an even greater pending global threat as the pandemic spreads to low-income nations. Adhanom said that limiting impact among those vulnerable populations requires “every country and every individual to do everything they can to stop transmission.”

During the Q&A, Adhanom went further, noting that while the immediate threat still needs to be addressed, and addressed promptly, the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed fundamental issues with our global approach to pandemic preparedness that we’ll need to address longer-term.

“Globally we have a very, very serious weakness in terms of preparedness,” he said. “While doing our best to suppress this pandemic, at the same time we have to think about planning for the future, for the long-term. Improving our preparedness, making sure that the world is better prepared.”

“It’s time to commit to invest in our weaknesses, and minimize our risk as a global community,” Adhanom continued. “No country can develop or strengthen its system and protect itself from outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics. The world is more intertwined than ever before – globalization cannot be reversed […] we need to make sure that we act in unison to build the global preparedness and the global resistance.”

WHO also reiterated and clarified the best actions that individuals can take to help contribute to the global effort to combat the spread of the virus. The organization’s COVID-19 Technical Lead Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infection disease epidemiologist, acknowledged that people are feeling afraid, and stressed the importance of hand-washing as one action that everyone can take to make a difference.

“Being scared is normal, what we need to do is channel that energy into something positive, and making sure that you know what you can do to protect yourself,” she said. What we do know that works in terms of your hands, and in terms of what you need to do, is washing your hands. We say this all the time. And it may not be the most exciting thing, but it’s the most important thing that you can do to protect yourselves.”

“Every single person who is washing their hands is helping themselves and others,” she continued, noting that everyone should “wash [their] hands as much as they possibly can.”

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Verily’s coronavirus screening site is already out of testing appointments

Last night, slightly ahead of schedule, Verily launched its much-discussed coronavirus screening site. On the site, which is only available in parts of the Bay Area, users can describe their symptoms and Verily will then direct them to a testing site if necessary. After only a few hours online, though, the site has already run out of appointments.

“Appointments will continue to expand through this program as we scale capacity in the near future. Please check back later,” the site now says, but only after you’ve gone through most of the questionnaire.

It’s obviously not Verily’s fault that the state’s testing sites are at capacity and if anything, this proves the need for a service like this on a national scale.

Originally, in a press conference on Friday, President Trump said a site Google was working on was going to be the core feature of a national testing strategy. That story changed quite a bit over the weekend as Google and Verily clarified their efforts and it became clear that the White House overpromised, but Verily then launched its pilot site ahead of schedule on Sunday night.

We have asked Verily for more information and will update this post once we hear more.

Alphabet’s Verily launches its California COVID-19 test screening site in a limited pilot

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Daily Crunch: Alphabet’s Verily launches COVID-19 screening site

Alphabet launches a site for COVID-19 test screening, the stock market continues to fall and Microsoft Teams goes down. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 16, 2020.

1. Alphabet’s Verily launches its California COVID-19 test screening site in a limited pilot

Alphabet-owned health technology company Verily has launched the COVID-19 screening site that was first described by President Trump as a broadly focused coronavirus web-based screening and testing utility developed by Google.

After a flurry of blog posts by Google and Verily over the weekend — as well as Trump’s subsequent claim that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called him to apologize — it became clear that the screening and testing site was a Verily project, limited in scope to California residents, with a specific focus on a couple of counties for now.

2. Stock markets halted for unprecedented third time due to coronavirus scare

The morning after the Federal Reserve cut its interest rates to near zero at the urging of the president, all of the indexes posted major losses. For the third time in the past two weeks, the Dow hit its emergency circuit breaker as the market opened; the S&P also halted trades.

3. Microsoft Teams goes down — just as everyone starts working from home

The technology giant left a cryptic message on Twitter, stating that it has “received reports that impact associated with TM206544 is ongoing.” Perfect timing.

4. The latest Powerbeats bring Pro-style updates to a tethered design at $149

After several weeks’ worth of leaks, the latest version of Apple/Beat’s Powerbeats arrives this week. But there will be no Powerbeats 4 — not for now, at least. Instead, the company’s somewhat confusingly doing away with the numbering scheme in favor of the simpler “Powerbeats” name.

5. Startup founders are building companies on WhatsApp

VC Lisa Enckell looks at companies like shoe brand Portblue, AI e-commerce company Sorabel and Sama, an online recruitment platform for migrant workers, which all started life using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to communicate with customers, onboard users and raise brand awareness. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Y Combinator may go fully remote for its next cohort

Y Combinator said that it may make its Summer 2020 accelerator program entirely virtual, proving that even the world’s premier accelerator isn’t immune to having its business reshaped by the novel coronavirus spreading across the world.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The team at Equity discusses what the collapse of the public markets might mean for startups aiming to raise funding. Meanwhile, on Original Content, we review the new FX/Hulu series “Devs,” a creepy techno-thriller that also provides some relief from the craziness of the real world.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Grocery delivery apps see record downloads amid coronavirus outbreak

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the U.S., grocery delivery apps have begun seeing record numbers of daily downloads, according to new data from app store intelligence firm Apptopia. On Sunday, online grocery apps including Instacart, Walmart Grocery, and Shipt hit yet another new record for daily downloads for their respective apps, the firm says.

Comparing the average daily downloads in February to yesterday (Sunday, March 15), Instacart, Walmart Grocery, and Shipt have seen their daily downloads surge by 218%, 160%, and 124%, respectively.

Typically, these apps (except for Shipt) see tens of thousands to as many as twenty thousand-plus downloads per day. But on Sunday, Instacart saw over 38,500 downloads and Walmart Grocery saw nearly 54,000 downloads, the firm says. Shipt, though hitting record numbers, saw only 7,285 downloads on Sunday. To some extent, its lower figures could be due to Target’s move to integrate Shipt’s grocery delivery service, which it owns, into its main app.

In fact, the Target app has also broken records for daily downloads, the report found. On Sunday, Target’s app saw over 53,100 daily downloads when a month ago, it was seeing 25,000+.

Walmart very recently announced it would merge its grocery delivery service into its main app, as Target has done. But for now, consumers are still seeking out and downloading its standalone grocery app at record levels.

These grocery delivery apps are in demand more than ever during this health crisis.

With government mandates to practice “social distancing,” U.S. consumers have been stocking up for long weeks to be spent at home. Stores were cleared of key supplies, like toilet paper, and several also saw long lines and crowds as panic-buying set in. Grocery delivery and pickup, meanwhile, presents an easier option — as well as one where you could limit your exposure to other people. With grocery pickup, consumers only have to interact with a single store employee from their curbside parking space. And with grocery delivery, most orders can simply be left on the doorstep with no person-to-person contact required.

Several grocery delivery services, including Instacart and others, promoted the fact they would add a “contactless” delivery option which help contribute to the huge sales boost. On Thursday, Instacart said its sales growth rates for the week was 10 times higher than the week before, and had increased by as much as 20 times in areas like California, New York, Washington, and Oregon.

Apptopia’s report didn’t analyze the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Amazon’s grocery delivery business, which includes Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods deliveries. This is more difficult to do because Amazon grocery orders aren’t placed inside a dedicated app, as with Instacart. However, Amazon confirmed a technical glitch on Sunday affected online orders through both its grocery delivery services, which the company attributed to the increase in online shopping.

“As COVID-19 has spread, we’ve seen a significant increase in people shopping online for groceries,” an Amazon spokeswoman explained, in a statement shared with Bloomberg. “This resulted in a systems impact affecting our ability to deliver Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market orders [on Sunday night]. We’re contacting customers, issuing concessions, and are working around the clock to quickly to resolve the issue,” they added.

Amazon Prime is also expected to experience delays and shortages as consumers stock up on non-grocery household items, the company says.

But even as grocery delivery booms, the market for food delivery apps has not seen the same results.

Despite promises for contactless delivery from several providers, including Uber Eats, food delivery apps are not experiencing a similar surge in daily downloads. According to Apptopia, the food delivery market earlier in March was starting to cool off. It later began to pick up but then cooled off again as consumers realized the expense of ordering food compared with home cooking, and because some consumers view restaurant delivery as not being as safe as cooking at home.

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Online ID verification is seeing a spike in demand driven by COVID-19

With many businesses switching staff to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic there’s been a clearly chronicled surge in demand for videoconferencing and others comms tools like Zoom.

Other types of startups are also seeing a bump in usage as both consumers and businesses seek to do more online during a global health crisis. Telehealth is an obvious one. Earlier this month US president Trump waived restrictions on telehealth services for the federal health insurance program, Medicare — opening the door to a surge in remote consultations from Americans with federal health insurance.

Europe, meanwhile, is currently seeing the fastest rates of confirmed infections of COVID-19 — which is also driving demand for remote medical check-ups.

Sweden-based doctor-by-video startup, Kry, today reported a huge surge in demand across all of its markets (Sweden, Norway, UK, France and Germany) which it attributed to the on-going coronavirus pandemic, with consultations for viral symptoms alone up 240% since February 1.

Several online identity verification startups also told us they’ve seen increased demand over the past few weeks — including from parallel growth in telemedicine where remotely verifying a patient’s identity is a core requirement given the sensitivity of the data involved. 

Digital identity startup Passbase, which offers APIs to make it easy for developers to plug and integrate a range of consumer-friendly identity checks into their digital services, also told us it’s seen an “unprecedented” spike in requests from European and North American companies operating in the MedTech sector over the past two+ weeks — as more people seek out remote consultations to reduce potential spread of the virus.

One of Passbase’s customers — German telemedicine platform TeleClinic — was directly involved in helping diagnose staff at a car plant which reported the first COVID-19 infection in the country.

“As a health and digital product trust in our service is a must have,” said TeleClinic founder and CEO, Katharina Jünger, in a supporting statement on how Passbase had sped up scalable onboarding. “The fact that an individual patient can talk to a medical professional and receive trusted information instantly is very important, especially in times like these.”

Passbase said it’s giving priority integration support and waiving all subscription fees for any company dedicated to helping individuals get through the COVID-19 crisis. “In these unprecedented times, everyone needs to do their part as we battle this ongoing epidemic together. By fast tracking onboarding for these companies we hope we can help some people affected by the Coronavirus,” added co-founder and CEO, Mathias Klenk.

Another digital identity startup, Onfido — which pledges on its website to be able to verify a person’s identity in as little as 15 seconds — also told us it’s seen a big jump in demand from the healthcare sector.

“Our clients offering remote online consultations have seen a massive 370% increase in the number of applicants since January, compared to last year,” said a spokesperson. “Clearly there are advantages from not having to go into a hospital or a local physician’s waiting room for fear of contracting the virus in the waiting room.”

It also said it has seen a bump around travel — though for a very specific niche: Car rental.

Customers in the sector are onboarding 26% more applicants this month vs the same time last year, it told us. “The likely explanation is that daily commuters who don’t own a car are refraining from taking public transport for fear of picking up the virus in overcrowded trains or buses, instead electing to drive themselves to work,” the spokesperson noted.

Increased demand for online banking and fintech is also driving usage of its tools at the present moment, per the spokesperson. “Early signs seem to suggest a 21% increase in signups this month. Presumably, so that people can gain access to financial services from their home without the need to go inside branches,” they added.

Last week, another startup in the space — Veriff, with an “end-to-end verification service” that combines automated and manual analyses to authenticate inputs — reported seeing a “steady increase” in verifications, which it partly linked to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Though it said it’s expecting a bigger boost going forward, after seeing a surge in inquiries about its service.

“Coronavirus does present new use-cases and needs for remote ID verifications,” founder and CEO Kaarel Kotkas told us. “For example, we have been contacted by universities who are looking for remote examination options, but also large tech companies for account recovery and credentials reset to support remote work.”

“As to our current clients, we have seen a steady increase in ID verifications over the last month — globally it is around 20% increase. However, it definitely cannot all be accounted for the coronavirus. Yet, when looking at the last 2 weeks when coronavirus has really escalated in Europe and the US, it has triggered a lot of integrations connected to coronavirus like e-notaries, digital healthcare, and others. Therefore we expect a 50% jump in our volumes next month,” he added.

A longer term player in the digital identity space — Authenteq, which sells an omni-channel ID verification and KYC services — also confirmed an uptick in demand.

“We are seeing an increase in requests from both companies that cater to the remote worker market as well as companies that want to move to increased remote work or work from home policy,” said co-founder and CEO Kari Thor.

“We had a large muliti-national client that we were working on integrating our ID Verification solution, that a few weeks ago changed the focus of their use case to verify their workers remotely, not only to access company intranet and other systems but as well to allow people now working from home to electronically sign documents and contracts using the Authenteq technology.

“Although this hasn’t been the main value proposition that we have had and have only dealt with employee eID on special occasions, we have started focusing more on this product offering for companies in these uncertain times.”

“Obviously the US market is maybe a little behind the Asian and European clients and I think we will see more interest from the US companies this week as they realize that things might be heading in the same direction with regards to WFH [working from home] policies as we’ve seen in Europe in the last 10 days,” he added.

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Kenya turns to its mobile-money dominance to stem the spread of COVID-19

Kenya’s largest teleco, Safaricom, will implement a fee-waiver on East Africa’s leading mobile-money product, M-Pesa, to reduce the physical exchange of currency in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The company announced that all person-to-person (P2P) transactions under 1000 Kenyan Schillings (≈ $10) would be free starting Tuesday for the next 90 days.

The move came after Safaricom met with the country’s Central Bank and per a directive from Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta “to explore ways of deepening mobile-money usage to reduce risk of spreading the virus through physical handling of cash,” according to a release provided to TechCrunch from Safaricom.

To increase the use of digital-payments over cash, the East African telecom will also allow SMEs to increase their daily M-Pesa transaction limits from 70,000 Kenyan Schillings to 150,000 (≈ $700 to $1500).

The measures represent the ability of the Kenyan government to use digital-finance as a lever to influence social-distancing and P2P transactions in an infectious health crisis.

M-Pesa has 20.5 million customers across a network of 176,000 agents and generates around one-fourth ($531 million) of Safaricom’s ≈ $2.2 billion annual revenues (2018).

In some respects, having all that output on one platform represents systemic risks to Kenya’s economy.  But in the case of a global health pandemic spread by human contact, the dominance of mobile-money in the country provides a policy-tool to encourage digital vs. physical contact on a wide scale through financial transactions.

Kenya has only three cases of COVID-19 (aka coronavirus), according to Worldometer, but the country is taking cautionary measures. President Uhuru cancelled two foreign meetings due to the virus, the univeristy of Nairobi shut-down classes and a number of companies in the country are encouraging workers to telecommute, according to local sources and press reporting.

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Microsoft Teams goes down — just as everyone starts working from home

Microsoft Teams is down.

Perfect timing, as some might say, given that pretty much everyone who uses Microsoft Teams who can work from home is currently not working at all.

The technology giant left a cryptic message — which at least is more than its users can do right now — on Twitter, stating that it’s “received reports that impact associated with TM206544 is ongoing.”

“We’re investigating the issue,” said Microsoft.

A lot of workers are staying at home because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Countries are shutting borders, entire industries are struggling, the U.S. Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates, and governments are scrambling to protect their populations by asking millions to stay at home.

Suffice to say, a Microsoft Teams outage right now is not exactly helpful.

It’s Microsoft Team’s second outage in as many months after the software giant forgot to renew a TLS (HTTPS) certificate, forcing the service offline and users unable to communicate with colleagues for hours.

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Eventbrite confirms the coronavirus outbreak will materially impact its business

Global ticketing and events business Eventbrite announced this morning its business outlook will be materially impacted by the COVD-19 pandemic, as many have already suspected. Specifically, the company says it’s withdrawing its outlook for the first quarter of 2020 as a result of the “growing impact” the outbreak is having on global live events.

The announcement comes at a time when many places around the world have banned large gatherings —including U.S. states like California, New York and Washington — making events like meetups, conferences, concerts, and more not just ill-advised but illegal. Local governments are also telling residents to practice social distancing in order to reduce the virus’s spread. And on Sunday, the CDC recommended that no gatherings of more than 50 people should take place over the next eight weeks to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus across the U.S.

This would include conferences, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events, and other assemblies — the sorts of events that flow through Eventbrite’s ticketing platform and live events management systems.

“The global pandemic and the impact on the live events industry is unprecedented,” said Julia Hartz, Eventbrite’s Chief Executive Officer, in a statement released this morning. “We are working diligently to ensure the wellbeing of our global workforce and support our customers as they make important decisions about their events through this period of time. The year started off strong across the board and we are now seeing a material impact to our business from the virus. While the ultimate magnitude of this near-term impact is unclear at this time, we remain confident in our go forward strategy, our market position and the long-term demand for live experiences,” she added.

Eventbrite in 2019 had grown its business to reach a community of nearly 1 million creators who organized 4.7 million live events across 180 countries. Its revenue for the year was up 12% on an annual basis to reach $327 million. Going into 2020, Eventbrite expected to expand those numbers.

In February, the company had said it anticipated first-quarter revenue of $84 million to $88 million, and 2020 revenue of $342 million to $359 million. Its business outlook also anticipated 3% to 8% revenue growth for the first quarter of 2020 and 5% to 10% for the full year of 2020, with stronger revenue in the second half of the year.

In addition to the loss of revenue from events that aren’t even being planned, the company is likely also impacted by cancellations which lead to chargebacks.

Eventbrite had previously hinted at the novel coronavirus’s potential to impact aspects of its business during its Q4 2019 earnings call, noting that 10% of its events on the platform drew attendees from over 100 miles away, where travel restrictions could lead to lower attendance. In addition, 10% of tickets of paid tickets came from events with over 5,000 attendees, where the cancellations of large-scale events could impact the business outlook.

But Eventbrite had also spoken with a sense optimism at the time, adding that many events it serves are smaller, local gatherings and that it had so far seen only a limited number of cancellations.

Of course, much has changed between February and now.

The company did not offer revised projections at this time, as much is still unknown about how long before the outbreak is under control.

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Alphabet’s Verily launches its California COVID-19 test screening site in a limited pilot

Alphabet -owned health technology company Verily has launched the COVID-19 screening site that was first misrepresented by President Trump as a broadly focused coronavirus web-based screening and testing utility developed by Google . After a flurry of blog posts by Google and Verily over the weekend, as well as a follow-up press conference by the White House, it became clear that the screening and testing site was a Verily project, limited in scope to California residents, with a specific focus on a couple of counties for now.

That’s what launched on Monday morning (as eventually clarified by the White House) – a site hosted at Verity’s Project Baseline, which until now has acted as a portal connecting potential participants with medical research studies. The California COVID-19 risk screening and testing site provides screening and potential free testing to those who are eligible based on its criteria, which right now includes residents of Santa Clara County and San Mateo County.

In addition to being located in these places, eligible participants must also be 18 or older; a resident of the U.S.; able to speak and read English; and willing to sign a COVID-19 Public Health authorization form, according to the website. This form provides permission to Verity to collect a person’s information to be used for the screening process. Anyone looking to make use of the site must also either create a new Google account or connect their existing account in order to register.

Despite the requirement of a Google account, Verily says on its website FAQ that it “follows federal and state regulations governing the collection and use of an individual’s data,” and stores the information securely in an encrypted format. It does note that Verily staff will have direct information to identifying information about anyone who uses the site, and that information will be shared with health care professionals, lab personnel, and health officials, and that info could potentially be shared with Verily’s data technology provider partners, including Google.

The company specifically says that it will not share any info with any insurance or medical providers without direct consent, and that any information shared through the COVID-19 screening process will not be used for advertising.

What the website actually provides participants is a multi-question survey that determines initial eligibility, followed by a more in-depth questionnaire intended to asses a person’s risk relative to actually having contracted coronavirus, which is then used to determine whether to direct them to a mobile testing site where they’ll receive a nasal swab and, after “a few days” according to Verily, their test results.

Verily said in a blog post over the weekend that it is working with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office on expanding availability of the tool to additional parts of the Bay Area and the state. The company hasn’t so far mentioned explicitly any plans to expand to other states, and when I posed the question via email I received an auto-response directing me to their blog post citing a high volume of inbound requests.

Trump says Google CEO Sundar Pichai called to apologize