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Comment by calebrob6 | Hacker News Reader

Google Communications says here that Verily (a sister company to Google) is working on a small scale tool for the Bay area: https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238574670686928906

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Verily is an Alphabet subsidiary. To the majority of Americans, 'Alphabet' is Google, because Alphabet is the successor organization to Google the company. All these ridiculous technicalities are nuts. No one cares that Alphabet decided to reorganize to maximize shareholder value. Alphabet is literally Google, and still trades under that ticker (GOOG). When people talk about Google the company, they mean Alphabet, and you know that.

Like, most people on HN talk about how 'Google Fiber' is part of Google, but really it's not, it's part of Alphabet, which owns the trademark Google. Or again, when GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) invests in a company, people say 'Google invested in <blah> company', because GV is alphabet, which is Google because... Google the company means Alphabet in common parlance. Stop nitpicking.

The important part is not google vs alphabet, it’s the fact that their site will only be available for the Bay Area.

And that there isn't 1700 people working on it.

Good point. The most important part of the speech is the number of engineers working on it. If we have 1699 it might not work but if only we could know we had 1700 then we would all be saved /s.

Number of engineers is a sign of the scale and significance of the project.

initially.

Exactly. For weeks people have been clamoring to get tested, including outside of the Bay Area. But whatever they’re launching will not help provide this in the short-term. That is the point.

You:

> for the Bay area

Them (in the Tweet you linked to):

> ... with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.

Google Communications says here that "Google is partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information."

https://twitter.com/Google_Comms/status/1238989460127338497

Will everyone who blasted Trump in this entire post apologize? Don’t hold your breathe.

If I could make a list of the people least deserving of an apology, Trump would be near the top.

People with integrity apologize based on their own actions, not their opinions of the qualities of the other party.

I apologise to douchebags regularly, if I'm wrong, though I'm very clear about the limitations of the apology.

No, no not apologizing to Trump. Apologizing to HN readers for spreading the fake news even after Google themselves came out with a statement saying that they are in fact doing what Trump announced.

No. Did you actually watch the press conference? What Trump announced is what Verily is building. But he implied it would be nationwide. It’s not.

> Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.

This sounds like it’s in addition to what Verily is building. So I doubt it’s the diagnostic and get to testing site function that Verily’s working on.

It’s absolutely separate from the Verily work, because they explicitly say that.

Other than that all we know is it’s “information about COVID symptoms, risk, and testing information”. Which at least aligns roughly with what was announced on Friday.

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