Google continues to prioritise health and safety, the tech giant has announced to keep its summer internship programme virtual in 2021, rather than being cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic

While this is the first time that the company has done this, Google promises that despite this, “what it means to be an intern at Google hasn’t changed – we want our interns to have fun and make an impact on products that people use every day.”

According to the company, technical positions will be focused on open source projects, so that users across the world can collaborate on the same code at the same time.

For the first time in Google history, thousands of students from 43 countries started their summer internships virtually this year.

“We hosted more than 200 orientation sessions across the globe and held more than 300 events throughout the summer to help interns connect with their peers, hear from Google leaders, and engage with various teams,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The company said that interns like Ishani Srivastava, working on the software engineering side of Google Workspace in Bokaro Steel City in Jharkhand, would end each day by crossing off the items on her to-do list and revisiting an old hobby: sketching and painting.

“With the stresses of a pandemic going on outside her door, she spent each evening unwinding with her art supplies, which helped her embrace a passion that didn’t involve school or work,” the company mentioned.

“As we continue to prioritize health and safety during the ongoing pandemic, we’re confirming that Google internships will be virtual again in 2021. By making this call now, we hope to give interns ample time to prepare for working in a virtual environment”.

To help make activities more accessible to our global community of both interns and employees, every intern had the option to be paired with a mentor or join a coffee chat with one of the 2,600 Googlers who volunteered to host one of these sessions to answer their questions.

“At its core, what it means to be an intern at Google has not changed, and we were excited to find 97 per cent of interns were satisfied with their experience,” Google said.