Work-from-home saved Google a whopping $1 billion in 2020, offices may open this year

Google saved a lot of money last year and that is when the company reported a 34 per cent boost in revenues.

With the coronavirus outbreak last year, nearly every company went for the work-from-home model that has often been a hot topic during work culture talks. Work-from-home became the new normal, and the world’s biggest tech companies were among the first ones to adopt this new system, including Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. According to a new report, Google, specifically, managed to save up around $1 billion because a large chunk of its workforce was working from home. As pointed out by Bloomberg, because of the pandemic, Google employees were not travelling as much as they would normally on the company’s dime, and that, in addition to expenses from company promotions and entertainment, led to savings of $268 million during the first quarter this year, as compared to the same period last year. Google said in a company filing that this was “primarily a result of Covid-19.” And if you calculate this expense on an annualised basis -- and because it has nearly been a year since Google shut its offices across the globe -- Google has saved more than $1 billion in expenses. That is a big number, but not very surprising because Google had over 1.3 lakh full-time employees worldwide at the end of 2020, as per a report by Statista. And since most of these employees were working remotely, the company saved up a colossal amount in expenditure. Google is famous for going overboard in terms of giving perks to its employees, including massage tables, catered cuisine, and retreats to exotic locations. Because most workers were at home, Google managed to keep a lot of money unspent.