The Android statue on the lawn has disappeared from Google’s headquarters

In the early days of Android's publication, it was not difficult to find multiple Android OS-themed statues outside Building 44 at Google's Mountain View headquarters, and at its peak, a total of 18 statues stood in Google's backyard. Recently, Google moved these statues from Building 44 to a small park outside the visitor center. Now, though, the Android statues have completely disappeared. Sometime in the past few weeks, they moved all the statues to an undisclosed location.

Media contacted Google to find out what happened, but have yet to receive a response.

Over the past two years, Google's campus has been sparsely occupied due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The visitor center near the park, where the Android statue was originally placed, has been closed for a long time. From 2020 until a few weeks ago, park visitors reported that the statue looked terrible.

"I was expecting a feast and instead I saw desolation and destruction," one critic wrote during a visit three weeks ago." The whole area seemed abandoned, and the original merchandise stores that came and went looked from the outside like those post-apocalyptic stores you see in video games and movies."

Now, Google's headquarters appears to be completely devoid of Android statues, just a patch of dirt, and no official hints are hanging out to say whether they'll be back.

It is speculated that Google may have removed these statues in order to do some restoration on them. Because the past two years there are comments on the site mentioned that most of the statues because of the wind and sun now look very dilapidated.

Interestingly, the 2022 Google I/O conference will actually be attended by some people on site this year, and Google will be holding its themed event at the Shoreline Amphitheatre for a select audience. It's likely that Google is preparing an interesting reopening of Android Statue Park to coincide with this gradual return to normal offline activity.

However, Google also hasn't made a new physical statue for the park in years, with Android 11 and Android 12 both sticking with virtual statues. Perhaps Google is moving on from the whole idea of having statues and we won't see them again?