As COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus from China, continues to spread worldwide, major technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Salesforce have been forced to cancel global conferences.
Here are nine major tech-focused conferences that have been canceled in recent weeks amid concerns over coronavirus, beginning with the most recently announced cancellation:
- Google canceled its I/O developers conference, the company's largest annual event, on March 3, but promised to look into virtual ways to connect its community of developers. I/O was scheduled to begin on May 12 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif.
- On March 2, Microsoft began alerting attendees of its Most Valuable Professional conference that the physical event — scheduled for March 16-19 in Bellevue and Redmond, Wash. — had been canceled, making the MVP Global Summit an "online-only/virtual event."
- Less than a week earlier, Google canceled a major internal sales and marketing event, scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in March. In a Feb. 28 statement to Fortune, a Google spokesperson said, "In light of the evolving coronavirus situation we made the decision to cancel an internal event that would have brought thousands of employees together from across two continents."
- The same day, Google also announced the cancellation of its two-day Global News Initiative summit in Sunnyvale, Calif., in late April, CNBC reported.
- Facebook announced on Feb. 27 that it has canceled its F8 developer conference, which was slated to be held in San Jose, Calif., in early May.
- A week before 3,000 attendees were scheduled to flock to Orlando, Fla., for Workday's internal sales conference, the Workday Sales Kickoff was canceled on Feb. 26 "out of an abundance of caution," a spokesperson told CNBC.
- The F8 cancellation came shortly after Facebook's Feb. 14 announcement that it was canceling its San Francisco-based marketing conference in mid-March, which was expected to draw about 5,000 attendees from around the world.
- On Feb. 13, Cisco made the "difficult decision" to cancel its March 3-6 Cisco Live Melbourne conference dedicated to digital business.
- Perhaps the first conference, tech or otherwise, to be canceled due to coronavirus was MWC Barcelona, one of the largest technology trade shows in the world. It was canceled Feb. 12, less than two weeks before its scheduled start date, after vendors such as Amazon and Intel dropped out of the event.
Editor's note: This article will be updated as more cancellations are announced.