More than a decade ago we introduced secure, easy-to-use business collaboration and productivity apps (now known as G Suite), and we envisioned a new way of working in the cloud. And although we always knew the value of cloud-based collaboration, it is more important than ever at a time like this. 

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen Google Meet—G Suite’s video conferencing solution—help millions of people stay connected, whether it’s colleagues working at home, companies livestreaming to global employees, doctors caring for patients, banks providing loans, retailers and restaurants helping the elderly place orders for home delivery or curbside pickup, social services conducting welfare checks, governments serving citizens, or schools staying in session. 

In the first week of April Earlier this week, we surpassed a new milestone, with more than 2 million new users connecting on Google Meet every day, and they’re spending over 2 billion minutes together—that’s more than 3,800 years of secure meetings in a single day. We’re humbled by the huge responsibility that comes with this growth, and we’re determined to continue doing our part to help.

Here’s a little more on what that means.

Meet, and all of G Suite, runs on Google’s secure, resilient global infrastructure, which helps us reliably manage our capacity to keep our services up and running. With Meet, organizations around the world can take advantage of the same secure-by-design infrastructure, built-in protection, and global network that Google uses to secure your information and safeguard your privacy. You can learn more in our Google Meet security blog post.

Last month, we made advanced Google Meet video-conferencing capabilities available at no cost to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers. We’ve now extended that availability to September 30, 2020 to ensure businesses, organizations, institutions, and educators continue to be supported during this time.

Earlier this year, G Suite also hit another important milestone, surpassing six million paying businesses and organizations. We’re acutely aware of our responsibility to these teams as they support their own constituents, patients, students, and customers during this pandemic. Here are a few stories they’ve shared.

Cambridge Health Alliance, a health system with 140,000 patients in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston’s Metro North region, has relied on G Suite to support its staff and caregivers. “We didn’t realize how integral G Suite had become to our daily work until dealing with a pandemic where consistent communication with our CHA staff was of utmost importance,” said James LaPlante, Sr. Director, Technology and Biomedical Services. “With one click, staff have been able to connect from their Gmail, Calendar, or from Meet-enabled conference rooms across three hospitals, 15 health centers, or from home.” 

In the UK, Hackney Council is using G Suite, Meet and Chromebooks to keep its team of 4,000 staff connected and to make sure that essential services can still be delivered for its citizens.

In Peru, the Judiciary branch is using Meet to continue operating during the nation-wide quarantine. Through video conferences they are carrying out both internal meetings and also hearings. By doing this, attorneys, lawyers and judiciary clerks don’t have to physically attend court, keeping the virus from spreading, while maintaining the administration of justice in the country.

Korean Air has transformed its internal business system with G Suite since July 2019, creating a positive company culture. Employees communicate effectively with G Suite in a variety of ways, including chat, voice, and video, which reduces decision-making time. Korean Air recently opened a ‘Google G Suite Meeting Room’ within the company to further enhance its cloud-native communication capabilities and accelerate mobile-based collaboration.

German manufacturing company KAESER Compressors adopted G Suite in 2018, which allowed them to transition 4,000 employees to working from home smoothly, with minimal disruption. They are using G Suite to connect with customers and job applicants.

When their news anchor voluntarily self-quarantined after suspecting he had been in contact with a person with COVID-19 during a convention, Milenio Televisión, a Mexican television cable news channel, had to figure out how to keep their show on the air. They chose Meet for its security, and high quality image and sound. Milenio Televisión is now broadcasting multiple shows through Meet and has been using the tool to have video conferences with correspondents in other countries. 

To help its staff cope with the impact of COVID-19, Italian bank Credem (Credito Emiliano S.p.A.) relied on G Suite, in particular Drive, Docs, and Meet, to seamlessly adapt to a collaborative work-from-home environment. It’s also helping them maintain business continuity, relying on Meet to continue to meet one-on-one with customers. 

In the Philippines, the Department of ICT (DICT) is responsible for the planning and development of information and communications technology. As a result of COVID-19, the department has been continuously seeking ways to improve its programs and services to help quarantined workers and citizens, including use of GovMail, which is built on G Suite, Google Chat, and Google Meet. “The migration to cloud-based GovMail which started last year has proven to be particularly useful for remote government operations in this time. Coordination between government agencies is more organized, resulting in faster responses benefitting their constituents,” said  Emmanuel Rey Caintic, DICT Assistant Secretary for Digital Philippines.

Kärcher, a German company known for its wide range of cleaning products, had initially planned to roll out G Suite to its workforce by 2021. In response to the pandemic, Kärcher rapidly accelerated their rollout, deploying G Suite to its entire 14,000 workforce in only five days. As of the end of March, Kärcher’s number of weekly active Meet and Chat users has grown by 20X.

Salesforce’s CRM solution brings companies and customers together, and they turned to G Suite to bring their own teams together. “With Salesforce employees working from home given COVID-19, innovative solutions like Meet are even more critical for effective virtual collaboration,” said Andy White, VP, Platform Engineering Salesforce. “Even with 2x our daily video calls—50,000 every workday—Google Cloud’s scale and support keep our teams reliably and seamlessly connected.”

The team at Shopify, a leading global commerce company, is relying on Meet to help them keep their workforce connected. “Even with the demand surges seen around the world, recently we had a 20 person meeting livestream to 4,000 people and there were no issues,” said Garth Pyper, Director of Technical Infrastructure. “Google Meet is our primary means of video conferencing across 5,000 people at Shopify, and we are grateful for the security, reliability, and flexibility it provides.”

With the global move to a fully remote workforce during COVID-19, software company Xero has embraced G Suite to help them make a smooth transition. “Google Meet is vital in keeping our teams socially connected, and Docs, Gmail and the full G Suite family of apps has the team’s productivity and collaboration working as if we were in the office. The reliability and performance of G Suite has allowed the IT team to focus on other challenges we face with a remote workforce.”

In Singapore, NTUC Fairprice Co-Operative, the largest supermarket chain of the island nation, has experienced a surge of 400%+ increase in capacity needs as customers urgently prepare for COVID-19 with in store and online purchases of all the necessities. With the help of G Suite, NTUC was able to handle this increased demand even as they transitioned the vast majority of their workforce to remote work.

Schnucks, a family-owned supermarket retailer with 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin, was able to think outside the box to keep their business running and employees safe and connected. “We are running our Helpdesk 24/7 on Google Meet so that both our corporate and in-store employees can join in and get questions answered quickly. Our transportation department is able to practice social distancing by using a Google Meet ‘hotline’ as the WFH dispatch platform.” 

Meet had long been the standard collaboration tool for TELUS International, which provides customer experience solutions for global brands. “The Meet platform has helped us maintain and foster our caring culture as we transitioned from an on-site workforce to a work from home model,” said Michael Ringman, Chief Information Officer. “Whether through real-time collaboration, live meetings or a little stress relief with some virtual happy hours, our team’s ability to reliably connect ‘face-to-face’ through Google Meet has been integral to keeping us engaged despite the distance between us.”

These are just a few of the many stories we’ve heard. We’ll continue to support all our users to stay connected in the cloud. Read more on how Google Cloud is supporting businesses and communities here.