Google removes Black History Month, Women History Month and other diversity events from Calendar

Google has removed events such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, LGBTQ+ holidays, and other diversity themes from its online and mobile calendars. In its opinion, the world’s biggest search engine felt the events were no longer sustainable for its model.

According to a Google spokesperson, Madison Cushman Veld, the removal of the holidays bore from the overwhelming complaint of other missing events following its decision to incorporate cultural holidays into the Google Calendar.

“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,” he said.

Madison added that starting from mid-2024, Google returned to showing only public holidays and national observances globally while allowing users to manually add other important moments.

In the wake of the change, social media users have expressed disappointment as users who wish to track events and holidays such as Black History Month, Pride Month and Indigenous People’s Month will have to manually add the lists to their calendar.

However, Google clarified that the new development will not affect the Google Doodles which celebrate these events with digital artwork on the website’s homepage.

“Google continues to actively celebrate and promote cultural moments as a company in our products such as YouTube Music still offering a Black History Month playlist,” the company stated. 

The removal of the holidays, which was first reported last week by the Verge, comes within a continuous range of changes changes company had made after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Recall that last month, the company revealed that users in the United States would see a change in the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Also, it will start using the name “Mount McKinley” for the mountain in Alaska currently called Denali. Google is accustomed to the change in executive orders from the U.S. Presidency.

Also Read: Google Maps celebrates 20 years and 1 trillion kilometres of directions provided

Google and others amidst the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy

The search engine company recently announced that it would be rolling back its previous commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in its employment policies. This came after Trump’s orders to curb DEI in federal agencies in one of his policy shifts as the U.S. president.

Google scrapped its goal to hire more employees from historically underrepresented groups and also reviewed some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Not only Google,  but other businesses in the U.S. have been scaling back their diversity initiatives, years after pushing for more inclusive policies after protests against the police killings of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020

To curtail the situation, the company issued a statement.

“We’re committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year, we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there. We’ve updated our 10-k language to reflect this, and as a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic.”

Google also told its employees that it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by Donald Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors.

Earlier this month, Facebook parent Meta Platforms said in an internal memo it was ending its DEI programs, including those for hiring, training, and picking suppliers.

Amazon also said it was “winding down outdated programs and materials” related to representation and inclusion, in a memo to its employees, seen by Reuters.

Conservative groups, fortified by a 2023 US Supreme Court ruling that invalidated affirmative action in university admissions, have condemned DEI programs and have threatened litigation against companies implementing them.

DEI encompasses people of different ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, disabilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations. It also covers people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills, and expertise.