Google under fire after removing key dates from calendar app for millions of users
The tech giant has also abandoned its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruitment targets
Google is under fire after it removed key dates from the calendar app for millions of users.
A lot of Google users are unhappy after the tech giant dropped a lot of events from its calendar.
These important dates include Pride Month, Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Jewish Heritage, Holocaust Remembrance Day and Hispanic Heritage.
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This issue was raised in Google’s help forum, where one user questioned: “Why is pride month removed from the Google calendar?
“I understand you removed Pride month from the Google calendar. disagree with this and would like to add it back.”
Another person added: “It’s more than just pride month. They removed Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Hispanic Heritage.
“Please use the feedback option in Calendar to let the team know you want this back.”
Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld said in a statement to The Verge: “For over a decade we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in 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.
“So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.”
Users have taken to social media to share their own thoughts on the move, with many believing that it is ‘strange’ timing.
On Reddit, one user wrote: “Regardless of the reason they gave this is just one of those things that smells like bulls***…”
Another said: “This is unsustainable but shoving AI on every search I make isn't? Yeh, okay.”
A third commented: “I didn’t mind those things in my calendar, thought it was fun to see them there. Now just back to basic and boring calendar.”
And a fourth person added: “Google, like all big corporations, cares about one thing. Money.
“So… they have two piles of email… one complaining that pride and black history month et al are shown, one complaining that it isn’t.
“And then they cater to whichever group costs them the least money.”
Google recently announced that it was abandoning its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) recruitment targets as well as reviewing some of its other DEI programmes.
This is after Trump signed executive orders to end government DEI programs.