google-crisis-resp

The size goes up and down, depending on whether we have an active response going on. We do have a dedicated group of engineer and product leads, but we grow when we’re responding - we often bring in Googlers in an affected region and other team members who can help when we need more hands on deck.

We haven't seen any impact on our response efforts. We take our users' privacy really seriously, including on products like Person Finder (here's some info on what we do on privacy for that product: https://support.google.com/personfinder/?hl=en#1628148)

Great question. We're actually in the process of doing a UI refresh across our products to be more "mobile-first" (shout out to Nadav, our UI superhero), in response to non-desktop traffic from past responses exceeding 50% -- a number that will only get bigger over time. To address the needs of these mobile-affected users, we launched a cards-based "landing page" late last year, and recently launched a major phone-friendly redesign of Crisis Map. We'd love getting specific product feedback (esp. on UI side), so message me or tweet us if you have suggestions :)

It's from another part of Google, but Project Loon could one day help provide connectivity in situations like this. We hope that happens.

It's certainly not illegal. A lot of companies have programs to help give away money or product or even encourage volunteering amongst employees. In our case, we're using our tech and engineers to build something that helps get people the critical information then need during a crisis. There are other teams at Google that have social impact-focused missions (like Google.org or Google Ideas)