Image: tangi bertin/Flickr
A number of brands have royally bungled their responses to disasters, but every so often a company does solidarity right.This is the case with Google and a handful of other telecommunications companies such as Verizon and Sprint, which are all offering free international calling and/or text messaging to France so that families can check in on loved ones in the aftermath of the terror attacks that claimed over 120 lives in the French capital yesterday.Google's timely response was particularly commendable, with the organization tweeting just a few hours after the initial attacks that they had made calls to France on Hangouts and Project Fi free for the duration. Other telecoms quickly followed suit, with Verizon and Sprint announcing today that international fees to France will be waived indefinitely and Advanced Info Services opened the lines between France and Thailand until midnight on Sunday.Along with Facebook's Safety Check, these initiatives show an increasing awareness on the part of brands that, as multinational corporations worth billions of dollars, standing in solidarity with the victims of a tragedy means more than a hashtag or a temporary change in a logo's color scheme.Instead, real solidarity means doing everything at their disposal as a corporation, a provider of services, to alleviate the suffering of real people who have found their lives forever altered by yesterday's tragic events.Actions speak louder than words and by allowing the world to speak to France in its time of need, Google, Verizon and Sprint have shown what it means to do solidarity right.