Google Bars International Travel for Employees, Cancels Flagship Conference

By Sebastian Herrera and Rob Copeland

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is banning business-related international travel for its employees and canceling its flagship conference due to the coronavirus epidemic, according to a Google spokeswoman.

Google is among a list of companies that include Amazon.com Inc. and Twitter Inc. to be restricting employee travel for business reasons.

Google also said Tuesday it would cancel its annual developer's conference--its flagship event for the year--slated for May and held adjacent to the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters for roughly 7,000 attendees. A spokeswoman cited concerns around the coronavirus and the health of attendees.

Google earlier cancelled its internal Engage for Americas Conference in Las Vegas that the company said typically brings thousands of employees together from across two continents. Last week, Google said an employee at its Zurich, Switzerland, office tested positive for the virus after being in the office "for a limited time." Google at the time said the office remained open.

In response to school closures throughout the globe, Google said Tuesday that it is providing education workers across the world free access to the Enterprise edition of its video-conferencing service Hangouts. The Enterprise feature allows for virtual meetings of up to 250 people per call and the ability to record meetings and save them to the Google Drive platform.

Write to Sebastian Herrera at [e-mail] and Rob Copeland at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 03, 2020 17:01 ET (22:01 GMT)

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