In mid-March, Pete Massaro felt like he was in over his head. The global coronavirus pandemic was spreading quickly through the U.S., and Massaro, an engineer at Verily, the life sciences unit owned by Alphabet Inc., had suddenly been tasked with heading up the company’s efforts to help speed testing people for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.
He now had three days to open two drive-through testing sites. It was a tall order. Massaro’s team would have to find suitable locations, staff them, source supplies and figure out how to safely do the tests.
Then, adding to the stress, President Donald Trump announced out of the blue that Google, Verily’s sister unit under the Alphabet umbrella, was working on a nationwide system to