Google has recently removed several cultural events, including Black History Month, Women's History Month, and LGBTQ+ holidays, from its online and mobile calendars. This change requires users who wish to track these events to manually add them to their calendars. The company did not address the state of Doodles when asked by the Guardian, but continues to promote cultural moments in its products. This decision is one of many changes Google has implemented following the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency.
The removal of these holidays was initially reported by the Verge last week. Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld explained the rationale behind the decision, emphasizing that maintaining hundreds of cultural moments manually and consistently on a global scale was neither scalable nor sustainable.
“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. 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,” – Madison Cushman Veld.
Despite these changes, Google assures that it remains committed to celebrating cultural moments through its products.
“Google continues to actively celebrate and promote cultural moments as a company in our products,” – Google.
In addition to the calendar changes, Google has started rolling back its previous commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within its employment policies. This move aligns with orders from the US president to curb DEI efforts in federal agencies. Furthermore, Google has enacted the Gulf name change for US users, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America," and will begin using "Mount McKinley" instead of Denali for the mountain in Alaska.
The decision to no longer acknowledge certain holidays in its calendar service is part of a series of broader shifts at the tech giant. These recent actions reflect Google's current operational priorities and responses to external directives.