Nearly all of Google LLC parent Alphabet Inc.’s roughly 200,000 employees will work from home at least July 2021, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai announced in an internal memo today.

The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Pichai is said to have made the decision to extend the company’s telecommuting policy to the middle of 2021 last week after a meeting with other top company executives. 

“I know it hasn’t been easy,”  Pichai wrote in the internal memo. “I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months.”

Google had originally set a goal of opening some offices on July 6, then recently pushed back the date to Sept. 7. The extended work-from-home policy is said to apply to the majority of the search giant’s key offices worldwide including its headquarters in Mountain View, California.

The decision to have most employees working from home for at least 12 months could affect the way Google manages organizational processes such as recruiting. It may also drive changes in the company’s development roadmap.

Google, like other tech giants, relies on the in-house development of custom technologies to maintain its edge. The search giant designs custom chips for its public cloud and builds complex software to automate tasks such as data center cooling. Now that most Google employees will be telecommuting for at least year, the search giant has a bigger incentive to shift some development resources toward building tools that can help its workers be more productive from home.

The work-from-home extension could also lead to new features for Google’s productivity products. Over the next year, the search giant will have an opportunity to collect a large amount of feedback on services such as G Suite from the 200,000 employees who will be working from home. That feedback may help shape future product enhancements and feature additions.

Some tech companies have taken their work from home policies even further than Google. Twitter Inc., for instance, told employees in May that it will allow them to telecommute on a permanent basis. Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has similarly indicated that at least some staffers will be allowed to stop coming into the office on a regular basis.

Photo: Google