Google Calendar removes Black History Month, Pride Month, and other important events.

Google has made the decision to remove certain cultural holidays from its default calendar, a change that has raised concerns among users amid a broader trend towards reducing diversity measures. The affected holidays include the start of Black History Month, Women's History Month, Pride Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Native American Heritage Month. These celebrations had been added in recent years as part of an integration with TimeAndDate.com.

According to the company, these changes have been implemented over several months, with the goal of limiting recognition to only public holidays. A Google spokesperson, Madison Cushman Veld, explained that "for over a decade, we have worked with timeanddate.com to display public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar. Some time ago, the calendar team began manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in various countries around the world."

The reason behind this transition is that maintaining hundreds of holidays manually was not scalable or sustainable, and for this reason, starting in mid-2024, Google will revert to showing only public holidays and national observances globally, allowing users to manually add other important moments.

However, the public reaction has been mostly negative. Many users have expressed their dissatisfaction through Google’s help forums and social media, accusing the company of censorship and calling for the reintegration of these holidays. Some comments reflect the importance of recognizing these holiday months, especially in a context where they feel there is an attempt to eliminate their visibility.

This shift in focus at Google aligns with recent decisions by other major tech companies, which have also taken similar steps regarding their diversity programs and conduct policies. In terms of dates for interested parties to add to their personal calendars, they include: Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), Black History Month (February 1 to March 1), Women's History Month (March 1 to March 31), Jewish American Heritage Month (May 1 to May 31), Pride Month (June 1 to June 30), Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15), and Native American Heritage Month (November 1 to November 30).