Recently, users discovered that Google Calendar had removed key cultural events from its site, including Black History Month, Pride Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day.
At first glance, this seems to be another part of the company’s anti-diversity changes following President Donald Trump’s desire to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs. However, this change occurred in mid-2024 and is strangely only being reported now.
Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld, provided an explanation, stating, “Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world.”
Despite this, Google kept receiving feedback that some other events and countries were missing. Keeping track of hundreds of events manually and consistently on a global scale was not sustainable. Therefore, in mid-2024, the company decided to simplify and display only public holidays and national observances approved by timeanddate.com. One can only wonder why these holidays are not already displayed on both of these websites, considering their cultural significance. They are not just calendar dates, but important events that nobody should disregard.
Understandably, Google struggled to satisfy everyone with the countless holidays people hold dear. However, the timing of this being reported could not have been worse for the corporation, considering the DEI exclusion currently happening in the U.S.
Google has demonstrated its lack of concern for minority groups in the U.S. by “purging diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, cutting mentions of DEI from its annual report and scrapping its goal of hiring applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds.” Google scaled back on its Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives, so it is unsurprising that this came off as a slash of its “Pretend-to-care-about-the-public” budget.
Regardless of Google removing these culturally significant events from the calendar, February is still Black History Month; June will continue to be Pride Month and the other events will continue to exist. Pretending otherwise will not eliminate their historical and cultural impact. Even if these events are out of sight from one calendar, they will never be out of the mind for the people who celebrate them.