Google has completely cancelled Google I/O 2020, its biggest event of the year, due to the ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus. The company announced on March 3rd that it cancelled the physical I/O event, but now the whole thing is off.
“Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities — and in line with recent ‘shelter in place’ orders by the local Bay Area counties — we sadly will not be holding I/O in any capacity this year,” Google said in a statement on the I/O website. “Right now, the most important thing all of us can do is focus our attention on helping people with the new challenges we all face. Please know that we remain committed to finding other ways to share platform updates with you through our developer blogs and community forums.”
At I/O, which was set to take place from May 12th to 14th this year, Google typically shows off new features coming to Android and other Google services as well as announce new Google hardware. Now that the event is entirely cancelled, it’s unclear if or when the company will share similar updates.
Many tech conferences have been cancelled, changed, or delayed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Google announced on Tuesday that it would be indefinitely delaying its enterprise-focused Cloud Next conference, which had also already been changed from a physical event into a digital one. Apple said on March 13th that its 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference, typically a week-long in-person event, would be online-only. And Facebook and Microsoft have cancelled the in-person portions of their spring developer conferences.
