Employees must be vaccinated before they return to the office, says Google in policy reversal

Twitter, Facebook, Netflix and Apple have also altered policies due to the delta variant of Covid-19

Google has told staff they must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before they will be allowed to return to the office.

The ruling, a change to an earlier plan, was communicated to staff via a memo from CEO Sundar Pichai. The requirement will start in California at Google's headquarters and will then be rolled out across the US and later to its global offices, in compliance with local laws, Pichai said.

Return to the office will also be delayed from September to October.

"Anyone coming to work on our campuses will need to be vaccinated," Pichai said in the memo.

"We're rolling this policy out in the US in the coming weeks and will expand to other regions in the coming months. Getting vaccinated is one of the most important ways to keep ourselves and our communities healthy in the months ahead."

The new policy represents a reversal of the company's previous position, that employees would need to work a minimum of three days in the office per week.

Google is not the only big tech firm to change its plans in the face of the rising number of infections by the delta variant of Covid in the US.

Twitter has said it will close its newly reopened offices in New York and San Francisco and that it will "pause future office reopenings".

Facebook has said, like Google, that all employees will need to be vaccinated before they return.

Apple is to reinstate a requirement that staff and shoppers wear masks at most of its Apple stores in the US.

And Netflix has said that only vaccinated staff will be able to work close to actors on its film sets.

Google and other tech firms have done well financially during the pandemic as more people have turned to their services.

Earlier this week Google's parent company Alphabet's announced quarterly profits had almost tripled to $18.5 billion, thanks to a surge in spending on online advertising and cloud services. The company's video platform YouTube saw ad revenue leap to $7 billion in the quarter, compared with $3.81 billion a year ago.

Google's search revenue increased to $35.8 billion in the second quarter, nearly $4 billion higher than Q1 2021, and the company's total revenue rose 62 per cent, year-over-year, to $61.88 billion.