Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others issue joint statement on COVID-19 response efforts

Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube last night issued a joint industry statement regarding COVID-19 response efforts. You can read it below.

“We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe.”

Apple and Amazon are the two major companies missing from this list. I hope these two companies join the industry in combating COVID-19 around the world.

Over the weekend, Microsoft introduced a worldwide coronavirus tracker based on Bing which collects and organizes all the data available on the internet. The tracker shows both worldwide and countrywide confirmed cases, active cases and fatal cases. Not only that but clicking on a country will also pull up related news articles specific to that region. Bing scours major news websites like NPR and the New York Times for both the latest numbers and the news related to the particular country. Unfortunately, the Bing tracker provides statewide data just for the USA so if you’re in another part of the world then you will have to settle for the countrywide data.