Google has eliminated occasions akin to Black History Month and Pride Month from being listed on the calendar by default.
Other occasions that have been faraway from the default calendar embrace Jewish Heritage, Indigenous People Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hispanic Heritage Month.
Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld confirmed the adjustments to TechCrunch, saying that in mid-2024, the app reverted to indicate solely what timeanddate.com reveals as a public vacation or nationwide observance.
“Some years in the past, the Calendar crew began manually including a broader set of cultural moments in a large variety of international locations around the globe. We obtained suggestions that another occasions and international locations have been lacking — and sustaining tons of of moments manually and persistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” the spokesperson stated, including that customers can nonetheless “manually add different necessary moments,” to their calendars.
Google’s calendar replace information additionally comes only a day after the corporate formally modified the identify of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” for customers within the U.S.
The transfer was in accordance with the Trump administration’s government order to vary the identify of the Gulf.
It is unclear why these adjustments are simply being seen now by some customers but it surely comes because the roll-back on range, fairness, and inclusion efforts has taken the highlight. Big Tech firms have began to finish numerous DEI measures. Meta, Google, and Amazon have all introduced a reassessment or elimination of DEI packages, with the latter two adjusting the wording of their 10-Okay filings to take away some or all point out of DEI.
