Google sets I/O ’16 conference for May 18-20
Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted today that Google I/O ’16 will be held May 18-20.
The surprising part of Pichai’s announcement is that the annual developer conference won’t be held at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.
This year I/O will be held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif., in the same city where Google has its headquarters.
“I/O'16 coming to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago,” Pichai tweeted.
The Shoreline Amphitheatre is an outdoor venue with a capacity of 22,500 to 30,000, including seating and staging on the lawn and in the parking lot.
The venue has hosted large concerts and festivals, including Lollapalooza and Ozzfest.
"Exciting news: we’re only 18 weeks away from Google I/O! 2016 is going to be a special year for us -- we held our first developer day 10 years ago at the Googleplex," wrote Pichai in a blog post. "To celebrate our 10th anniversary of developer gatherings, we’ll be hosting I/O in our backyard . . . We’ll have 3 full days together to dive deep into developer content, code labs, and more."
Google didn't say why the conference was moved, but it could be that executives want an area where they can show off the company's self-driving cars or even its robots.
It’s never certain what Google executives will talk about at the conference, but some reasonable speculation for this year would include its cloud business, the next version of Android and a potential merging of Android and Chrome OS.
Google has not yet released other conference information, such as tickets, registration or participating hotels.
A Google spokesperson told Computerworld that developers should expect no major changes to the general format of the conference.