Google users have been complaining that the start dates of Black History Month, Women's History Month, and Pride Month no longer appear in the company's online and mobile calendars. Some users are accusing Google of trying to curry favor with the new administration, but the company says the change was made months before President Trump was elected last year, the Verge reports. The company says it has worked with timeanddate.com for more than a decade to show public holidays and national observances, but the system became unwieldy after a "broader set of cultural moments" was added years ago.
"Maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn't scalable or sustainable," Google said in a statement, per the AP. "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." Indigenous People Month, Jewish Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Holocaust Remembrance Day also no longer appear on the calendar by default.
CNBC notes that Google has made more recent changes that "align with an altered political environment in the US," including scrapping diversity goals and changing the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" in Google Maps. Asked by the Guardian whether it would continue to produce Google Doodles to celebrate months like Black History Month, the company said, "Google continues to actively celebrate and promote cultural moments as a company in our products" with features including a Black History Month playlist on YouTube. (More Google stories.)
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