Earlier this month, Google called off the physical event of its annual developer conference Google I/O 2020 citing the outbreak of coronavirus. The software giant was exploring options to move the event online and has now made it clear that it will be entirely skipping I/O 2020 this year.
The announcement was made last night at its Google Developers Twitter handle and was subsequently updated on Google I/O’s official website. “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.”, states Google.
“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.”
Google had already initiated steps to refund tickets to the event for developers and visitors. People who had registered for I/O 2020 will be directly eligible to purchase tickets for Google I/O 2021.
Meanwhile, the company’s Cloud Next’20 event that was originally scheduled to take place from April 6 to April 8 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center has been shifted online and will go live on the same dates.
The coronavirus pandemic has not stopped Google from releasing developer previews for its upcoming major Android version, Android 11. Google is sticking to its Android 11 roadmap and released Android 11 developer preview 2 with enhanced privacy features earlier this week.
