Google has for years used its popular online services to remind users about cultural events, marking its calendar app with occasions such as Black History Month and Women’s History Month.
Last week, some users noticed that the popular app was no longer displaying those observances, as well as a litany of others, prompting an online backlash from some users who saw it as another sign that Google was turning against more liberal viewpoints.
But Google said it removed the calendar observances in the middle of last year for apolitical reasons. Maintaining hundreds of moments manually each year for various countries “wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.
The belated uproar happened as Google and other big technology companies appeared to be reacting to conservative complaints that their products and policies are biased. Just last week, Google eliminated its goals specifying how much diversity it wanted in its work force, saying that as a federal contractor, it had to comply with President Trump’s executive orders opposing diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The Calendar controversy followed decisions by Google and Apple to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to Gulf of America in their map applications after Mr. Trump ordered the name change.
Google executives also said on Wednesday that they would stop offering diversity training programs and update other training efforts that have D.E.I. content, The Guardian reported.
For more than a decade, Google has worked with timeanddate.com (a website that shows the time, date and major holidays in places around the world) to label public holidays and national observances, such as Presidents’ Day and Labor Day. Several years ago, the spokeswoman said, Google’s calendar team started marking a broad set of cultural moments in countries around the world, and the company was asked to add more events and countries before it decided that was too unwieldy.
Google Calendar users noticed that references to Hispanic Heritage Month, Pride Month, Jewish American Heritage Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day had all disappeared. Google Calendar again shows only observances from timeanddate.com, including Memorial Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and users can add other moments, the spokeswoman added. The Verge first reported the calendar changes.
Google’s calendar app is used by more than 500 million people for work and personal reasons, and some of them mocked Google’s explanation that it was too difficult to keep up with every occasion.
One pointed out on X that Google “managed to keep Columbus Day somehow.” As a federal holiday, Columbus Day is still automatically marked on Google’s calendars.
Another user said the shift felt like an attempt “to rewrite history,” while others took the changes as a sign that Google was trying to appeal to Mr. Trump.
Google said that in some countries, celebrations marked on its calendar included teachers day. While those have gone away, the company said it was actively celebrating and promoting cultural moments as a company in its other products.
In the last two weeks, it marked Black History Month with an animation on its search page and a YouTube playlist. And it observed Lunar New Year with a search doodle and a curated collection of movies on Google TV.
