Facing another backlash that’s put the company in political crosswinds, Google says that its removal of cultural holidays and events such as Black History Month from its Calendar app is a scaling issue and not ideological.
Although some users on social media began noticing and posting about the changes online recently, at the same time as the company was criticized for changing Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in Google Maps, Google says the Calendar changes happened in mid-2024, and that users can add their own observances manually.
Read more: Gulf of America Divides Google Maps From Apple and Microsoft’s Offerings
Google says it is now only including “public holidays and national observances” in Calendar, and not adding cultural and historical events such as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month and Women’s History Month.
‘Not scalable or sustainable’
LIke other tech companies, Google is under increased scrutiny over changes it is making after the change in US presidential administrations. The company recently scaled back its diversity hiring and promotion targets in what Google said was a response to court decisions, executive orders and its role as a federal contractor.
“For over a decade we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar,” a representative for the company said in a statement. “Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world.”
The spokesperson went on to say, “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 company also pointed to other ways that it’s promoting and celebrating Black History Month and Lunar New Year.
Timeanddate’s website includes customized calendars that can include holidays only, holidays and observances, and other options. A calendar with “holidays and some observances” includes Cinco de Mayo, Black Friday and Father’s Day. Another version includes many more including National Wear Red Day, Armed Forces Day and the first day of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, for instance.