The Mountain View giant will invest more than 900 million dollars over the next five years for the digital transformation of Italian companies. This was announced with a tweet by the CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai: “Google is proud to be a partner in Italy’s economic recovery. To help transform Italian companies large and small, we will invest over 900 million dollars over 5 years, which includes the opening of the two Google Cloud Regions in partnership with Tim “.
“Italy in digital” is the name chosen for the five-year plan. Which will concretely consist of training projects, free tools and partnerships to support companies and people looking for job opportunities.
With similar initiatives, in recent years, the company “has already helped 500,000 people obtain the digital skills necessary to relaunch a business or improve their career,” Pichai explains in a statement. The new commitment aims to support an additional 700,000 people and small and medium-sized enterprises. “With the aim of bringing the total number to over 1 million by the end of 2021”. All the details and initiatives are available on the g.co/italiaindigitale website.
1 million euro to Unioncamere for SMEs in difficulty
In addition, Google.org will provide a 1 million euro grant to Unioncamere to support the digitization of Italian SMEs in difficulty. The Chambers of Commerce will be able to offer specific training and expert assistance to companies and workers, with particular attention to the sectors most affected by Covid-19. “To help people keep their jobs or find a new one.” According to research by McKinsey, around 60 million jobs are at risk in Europe today.
Digital skills and technology to overcome the crisis
Fabio Vaccarono, Managing Director of Google Italy, underlined: «If digital skills were already important before the pandemic, now they have become all the more necessary. To overcome the challenges of the present, digitization is an essential element, to find new job opportunities, to relaunch a business, and to the benefit of the whole society. The crisis has accelerated our use of technology: now technology can help us get out of the crisis ».