Google has completely canceled Google I/O 2020
There will be no I/O this year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic
Google has completely canceled 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 canceled 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."
I always look forward to watching Google I/O on YouTube. I'll miss it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:51AM
At least this COVID situation has one positive outcome
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zoward on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:12PM (3 children)
No one is traveling. No one wants to be around other people. And even though China claims to have brought the virus under control, their factories that make many of the goodies we look forward to hearing about from I/O remain closed, casting doubt that Google will be able to ship any hardware they have at the show. That pretty much leaves their software innovations, which are just as easy (and much less expensive) to introduce online. This seems to be the New Reality, at least for now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:26PM (2 children)
I think we are rooting for some of these physical events to be cancelled forever, or go streaming/virtual only. That won't happen for many of them, but if anybody should be moving in this direction, it's the tech industry.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/solrogers/2020/03/11/is-vr-the-solution-to-the-impact-coronavirus-is-having-on-the-event-industry/ [forbes.com]
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(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 21 2020, @06:44PM (1 child)
What I am rooting for is that this whole fiasco will be used as a convenient excuse to pull our manufacturing out of China and bring it to America where it belongs.
Well, then let's hope that this "market correction" will pay for it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday March 21 2020, @07:18PM
It will move back eventually, but it will mostly be automated. Which is fine.
In the short term, companies will continue to use China, since it could take years to extricate themselves. In the very short term, China is probably putting infected people to work if it's just a ~2% chance of death.
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