Google cancels I/O 2020 entirely in light of coronavirus

Google earlier this month announced that it was not hosting a physical developer conference in light of coronavirus. I/O 2020 is now entirely cancelled and will not be taking place “in any capacity this year.”

Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities — and in line with “shelter in place” requirements by the local Bay Area government — we sadly will not be holding an I/O event in any capacity this year.

On March 3, the company said it would “cancel the physical Google I/O event at Shoreline Amphitheatre,” and “explore other ways to evolve Google I/O to best connect with our developer community.”

At the time, many assumed I/O would take place online instead, just like what the Cloud Next enterprise conference committed to. However, Google Cloud this week delayed its “Digital Summit” replacement event set for early April.

While all sessions for both conferences were already going to be livestreamed, presenters and production staff still need to meet up to record everything. At the start of this week, the San Francisco Bay Area — and now the entire state of California — issued a shelter in place order to prevent unnecessary congregation for the foreseeable future.

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. We’ll continue to do everything we can to help our communities stay safe, informed, and connected. Please know that we remain committed to sharing ongoing Android updates with you through our developer blogs and community forums.

Looking forward, Google today does commit to ongoing Android developer updates through forums and blogs, just like with 11 Developer Preview 2 this week.

However, it makes no mention of other platforms like Google Assistant or the web. Chrome on Wednesday announced that it was pausing the browser’s next major version to ensure that a stable release is available. Microsoft Edge revealed it was doing the same today.

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