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Google has removed select holidays from its default Google Calendar, a move that has put users on watch as the company makes worrisome product changes amid a sweeping anti-diversity push.
The affected cultural and identity-based holidays include the start of Black History Month (which the nation is currently celebrating), Women’s History Month, Pride Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous People Month — The events were added over the last few years as part of an integration with TimeAndDate.com.
According to the company, these changes have been happening for months, as the product shifts to only acknowledging public holidays.
“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,” Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld told the press. “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.”
The general public wasn’t as convinced, however, with many taking to Google’s Help forums and social media to accuse the company of censoring its products or to plead with the company to reinstate the observances. “@/Google please change this back,” wrote one X user. “It’s such an important time that those holiday months should be acknowledged. Our government is trying to erase them please don’t assist in this. I know logistically it might be difficult but this is important. Please reconsider.”
Last month, Google quickly capitulated to President Donald Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” and announced it would be abandoning its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring program along with other DEI initiatives. Other tech giants have made similar, suspiciously eager, concessions, including Meta’s decision to remove its DEI programs and Hateful Conduct policy, allowing previously banned forms of hate speech on its platforms.
Just for reference, here’s those dates so you can add them back to your personal calendar:
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Holocaust Remembrance Day: Jan. 27
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Black History Month: Feb. 1 to March 1
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Women’s History Month: March 1-31
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Jewish American Heritage Month: May 1-31
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Pride Month: June 1-30
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National Hispanic Heritage Month: Sept. 15 to Oct. 15
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Indigenous Peoples Month: Nov. 1- 30
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Google users noticed cultural holidays have been disappearing from their calendars, as the company moves to recognize only public holidays.
