As part of its ongoing roll back of diversity initiatives, Google has removed several inclusive holidays from its Calendar service. It says their inclusion was โnot sustainableโ for its future.
Google Calendar has removed several key cultural holidays from it services on both desktop and mobile.
These include references to Black History Month, Womenโs History Month and LGBTQ+ holidays, among others. The company has previously marked the occasion for all of these different initiatives but has swiped them clean for 2025.
Google says it switched to only showing default entries for public holidays and national observances last year. The Verge first reported the missing annual events last week.
In a statement to The Guardian, spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld claimed that the listed holidays were not โsustainableโ for Googleโs model.
โSome years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wider number of countries across the world,โ she said. โWe got feedback that some events and countries were missing โ maintaining hundreds of moments manually wasnโt scalable or sustainable.โ
However, despite Googleโs apparent reasoning, this change is in line with the companyโs shift away from inclusivity. It recently announced it would be rolling back its previous commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in an effort to pander to Trumpโs Administration.
Other tech giants including Meta and Amazon have followed suit.
Many users of Google Calendar have shown disappointment at the latest decision. Anyone hoping to keep tabs on these types of events must now do so manually. It also damages the exposure of these holidays to people whoโve not heard of them, ultimately shrinking the conversation and possibility for wider acceptance.