Ledger · First term · № 136

very quickly / locations announced 'probably on Sunday night'

Google's '1,700 engineers' and a national testing website by Sunday night

Broken

“Google is helping to develop a website. It's going to be very quickly done... Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now. They've made tremendous progress.”

Promised

March 13, 2020, Rose Garden national emergency declaration

Stated deadline

“very quickly / locations announced 'probably on Sunday night'” → March 16, 2020

Overdue by

6 years, 6 months as of September 22, 2026

Topic

COVID-19

Era

First term

What happened

Google publicly corrected the record the same day. The project belonged to Alphabet's Verily, not Google, and launched March 15-16, 2020 as a pilot limited to two San Francisco Bay Area counties, with appointment slots filling almost immediately. Verily ultimately helped about 1.6 million people get tested in 2020 — under 1% of all US tests that year.

Sources

1. Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in a Press Conference Trump White House Archives, Mar 13, 2020
2. Trump: 1,700 Google Engineers Working On Coronavirus Site. Google Says... Actually, No Forbes, Mar 13, 2020
3. Google and Verily scrambled after Trump announced a coronavirus website Washington Post, Mar 16, 2020