Google today canceled its upcoming I/O developer conference that was set to take place on May 12 to May 14 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak sweeping the United States.
In emails sent out to Google I/O attendees, Google says that it is canceling the physical I/O event but will explore other ways to connect with the developer community. Refunds for I/O will be provided by March 13.
Due to concerns around the coronavirus (COVID-19), and in accordance with health guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other health authorities, we have decided to cancel the physical Google I/O event at Shoreline Amphitheatre.
All guests who have purchased tickets to I/O 2020 will receive a full refund by March 13, 2020. If you don't see the credit on your statement by then, please reach out to io@google.com. Guests who have registered for I/O 2020 will not need to enter next year's drawing and will be automatically granted the option of purchasing an I/O 2021 ticket.
Over the coming weeks, we will explore other ways to evolve Google I/O to best connect with our developer community. We will keep the Google I/O website updated with additional information.
Google is the second major tech company to cancel a developer event, following Facebook's decision to cancel F8 last week. As with Facebook's F8 event, Google's I/O conference is similar in scale to WWDC, attracting approximately 5,000 developers from around the world.
I/O would have taken place in Mountain View, California, but the canceled F8 conference was set to be held at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, the same venue that Apple uses for WWDC.
Apple has not announced dates for WWDC 2020, but based on past events, June 8 to June 12 are the likely dates that Apple is targeting. If those dates are accurate, WWDC would be a month after F8 and about three weeks after I/O.
Apple may still have some time before it makes a decision about whether to cancel WWDC this year due to coronavirus concerns, but with Facebook and Google both canceling May events, it's not looking good.
The coronavirus has already caused the cancellation of several major events that include Mobile World Congress and the Game Developers Conference.
COVID-19 has infected more than 90,000 people and more than 3,000 have died, primarily in China. COVID-19 is currently spreading in the United States, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I/O, F8, and WWDC take place, there have been nine confirmed coronavirus cases, including several in people who caught it from community transmission with no known travel and no known contact with an infected person.
