Google announced this weekend that it was delaying its planned release of the public beta version of Android 11 and The Beta Launch Show, a live streamed event to present major Android updates and announcements. In a tweet announcing the news, Google said that “now is not the time to celebrate.”
The company made the announcement in light of the protests sweeping the U.S. and the world over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minnesota who was shown on video gasping for breath as a white police officer kneeled on his neck.
Google originally planned to release the Android 11 beta and host its event on June 3.
“We are excited to tell you more about Android 11, but now is not the time to celebrate. We are postponing the June 3rd event and beta release. We’ll be back with more on Android 11, soon,” the company said.
After cancelling its physical developer conference, Google I/O 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic, Google decided to host The Beta Launch Show. According to 9to5Google, the online event would have featured a talk from Dave Burke, Android vice president of engineering, and Stephanie Cuthbertson, senior direct of product management, among others.
In addition to the keynotes, the event also planned a live Q&A with the hashtag #AskAndroid on Twitter. Google planned to release other talks on topics such as storage access, state of Kotlin and Android Jetpack, among others, the day of the event.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/looks-like-google-messages-might-finally-be-getting-end-to-end-encryption/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/25/rrcltkzjjwkajuwyhhzx-300×168.jpg” title=”Looks Like Google Messages Might Finally Be Getting End-to-End Encryption” excerpt=”End-to-end encryption for RCS appears to finally be in the pipeline for Google’s messaging app. That’s according to code spotted in an upcoming version update by the folks at APKMirror, as first reported by 9to5 Google this weekend.”]
9to5Google reports that the postponement will not change the final release date for Android 11, which is scheduled for the third quarter of this year, for app developers and partners.