Big Tech Faces Coronavirus Heat

Tech-heavyweight Google has cancelled its annual developer event, Google I/O, citing concerns related to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Google is the second FAANG member after Facebook to cancel its conference as the deadly virus has claimed over 3,000 lives globally and 92,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 disease have been reported till now.

Google I/O event (2019)

Earlier, Facebook cancelled its much-anticipated annual F8 developer conference amid virus scare.

Facebook's F8 conference (2019)

TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook have pulled out of the SXSW conference, also known as South by Southwest, which is scheduled from March 13-22 in Austin, Texas.

World’s biggest mobile trade show, Mobile World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, was ditched by major tech and mobile companies just two weeks before the schedule.

Mobile World Congress (2018)

The annual Game Developers Conference was postponed by the organisers after Facebook, Microsoft, EA and Sony’s PlayStation announced to skip the annual event.

To tackle the situation cautiously, Twitter has asked its 5000 employees (Tweeps) to work from home and put a pause on non-essential travel.

Out of an abundance of caution and care, both @Twitter and @Square are taking significant measures to help lower the probability of spread of #coronavirus #covid19, including strongly encouraging all of our employees globally to work from home if able. More here:

— jack (@jack) March 3, 2020

Meanwhile, Google has said that it’ll be moving its annual I/O event online.

Tech companies are resorting to video conferencing, using organisation management apps like Slack, moving online and minimising physical interaction/presence and that could very well be the future of tech-related events in the future even after the coronavirus fear comes to an end.