245: Google in the Time of Coronavirus

Flo is back, albeit solo, because the Material podcast and its hosts are practicing social distancing. Flo muses about life as a new parent, then launches into a rant about how it isn't fun hanging out in Hangouts anymore. Then, we talk about Verily's Project Baseline, and why it's a bit unnerving that the US government is relying on private companies to conduct testing for COVID-19. We also mourn the cancellation of Google I/O this year and wonder aloud: if this is the new normal, how will technology conferences exist going forward?

• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MATERIAL to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2021.
• Linode: Cloud Hosting & Linux Servers. Get a $20 credit.

• Google's Teach from Home initiative

• Trump announced Google was building a virus screening tool. Then someone had to build it

• Project Baseline

• You Shouldn't Have to Give Google Your Data to Access a COVID-19 Test

• Google has completely canceled Google I/O 2020