Google Calendar has removed references to months celebrating and honoring African Americans, women and LGBTQ+ communities because keeping the events wasn’t “sustainable”.
The tech giant previously marked the start of Black History Month in February and Pride Month in June but the events don’t appear for 2025.
The company has also removed references to Women’s History Month in March and Indigenous Peoples Month in November among other observances.
A Google spokesperson said the changes took place in the middle of last year.
“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” the spokesperson said.
“We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing – and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,”
Mid-last year, Google allegedly “returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments,” the spokesperson said.
open image in galleryGoogle Calendar has removed progressive events including Pride Month and Black History Month
Several Google Calendar users have been left furious with the removal of the events.
“Calendar used to capitulate to fascism,” one disgruntled user wrote on the user support page, adding: “This is shameful. Reinstate these calendar dates.”
“Grow a pair google. The ‘great’ orange leader doesn't get to own facts or history,” another wrote.
Google’s latest move takes place against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s diversity, equity and inclusion crackdown after he signed sweeping executive orders banning DEI initiatives throughout the federal government.
On Janaury 31, the Defense Department issued guidance declaring “identity months dead”. The same day, the White House appeared to make conflicting remarks, satnding firm in its proclamations that February is Black History Month.
Last Monday, landing pages for Virginia's U.S. Army Women's Museum – which celebrates the history of female soldiers in the military and celebrates their contributions to the Army – were temporarily removed before later being restored.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, joined the list of tech leaders who attended Trump’s inauguration last month.
open image in galleryGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai nestled between Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Tesla chief Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s inauguration
Google, a federal contractor, has now become the latest tech company to change its practices, joining the likes of Meta and Amazon.
The company recently began scrapping its diversity hiring goals to employ more people from underrepresented groups as Silicon Valley rethinks its DEI initiatives in the wake of the shifting political environment.
It comes as Google renamed the Gulf of Mexico has been renamed as the “Gulf of America” on Google Maps on Monday.
The rebrand of the oceanic basin – which is shared across the U.S., Mexico and Cuba – came into effect across the nation on Monday. Both names appear to Google Maps users outside of the country while, in Mexico, it remains the Gulf of Mexico.
It came after Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” on his first day.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/google-calendar-month-black-history-pride-women-indigenous-b2696660.html
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