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Comment by topkai22 | Hacker News Reader

I think the amount of international travel is huge part (the Houston rodeo might have 2M+ attendees, but I'll bet 90% of them are from Texas), but so are economics- It wouldn't suprise me if cancelling CONEXPOCONAGG or the Houston Rodeo would bankrupt the sponsoring organizations, whereas google won't even notice cancelling their events.

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SXSW in Austin was recently cancelled and the organization is considering bankruptcy. They laid off 1/3 of their full-time staff due to the cancellation.

https://twitter.com/efindell/status/1237156566564048898?s=19 https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-by-southwest-hit-hard-by-...

They won't be the last. There will be plenty of companies going under due to this.

>whereas google won't even notice cancelling their events

That's something of an overstatement. Companies don't put these things on for fun. But, yeah, they'll manage. And, to a first approximation, all the other companies and individuals who were sponsoring/attending/etc. will manage too and relatively few individuals will be directly and personally out of pocket.

That said, there will be startups who were planning launches around the Google events, there will be indirect downstream effects on people who organize events, do professional speaking, etc.

Google doesn't exactly do it for fun, but I'm sure it isn't a significant source of revenue. Given that most corporate conferences are essentially about marketing, the incentive is to be break-even, or even run at a loss. That's very different than people trying to make a living from an event.

Yeah, obviously it's not an easy decision, but my definition of "won't even notice" is that it even if it's a $20M write off, it's like 0.06% of their 2019 net income. For a lot of independent events (like SWSX) canceling the event means losing most of their operating budget.

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