San Francisco, Mar 21 (IANS): Google has announced to completely cancel its flagship "I/O 2020" conference, saying the digital-only event has also been put off.

"Out of concern for the health and safety of our developers, employees, and local communities - and in line with recent ashelter in place' orders by the local Bay Area counties - we sadly will not be holding I/O in any capacity this year," Google said 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," the tech giant added.

Google on March 3 announced the cancellation of its biggest tech event, scheduled in May, owing to the coronavirus fears.

The company said attendees will get refund and those who purchased tickets for this year's event will be granted the option of buying a Google I/O 2021 ticket.

Google I/O is its biggest news event of the year that brings new changes to Android and updates to services like Google Maps.

Tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco and Salesforce have also cancelled or postponed their annual conferences.

According to estimates data intelligence company PredictHQ pulled for Recode, the direct economic loss from the cancellation of major tech conferences has crossed $1.1 billion.