Google has cancelled its I/O developers’ conference for this year that was supposed to take place at Mountain View, California from May 12th to 14th due to coronavirus concerns. The company said that “it’s sad that we won’t be able to gather as a developer community but your health and safety is our priority.” The company said that it is exploring new ways to connect and support the global developer community and will offer more details on google.com/io.
Also, guests who registered for the event will automatically enter the drawing for I/O 2021 tickets next year. Google has also announced that it will give $1 million to local small businesses and schools for STEM research and coronavirus protection.
This is not the first global event that has been cancelled this year. MWC 2020 Barcelona, Facebook’s F8 developer’s conference, Game Developers Conference were some of the events that have been cancelled. Even though the event has been cancelled, it will likely have online streaming explaining the new features that will be introduced in Android 11 along with the Beta 1 that is expected in May.
In a related news, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that starting this week Google will roll out free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities through July 1, 2020 to all G Suite customers globally to help businesses and schools impacted by coronavirus stay connected.