Google Calendar drops Pride, Black History months; Google Maps renames Gulf of Mexico
Google has removed diversity events like Pride and Black History Month from its calendar app and renamed the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps.
On Monday, the tech giant announced it had followed the lead of the Geographic Names Information System and officially updated 'Gulf of Mexico' to 'Gulf of America' for users in the U.S.
Those accessing Google Maps in Mexico will continue to see the oceanic basin's original name, while people in other countries will see 'Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)' when visiting the company's popular web-mapping platform.
The changes in Google Calendar, the company's time-management and scheduling service, were highlighted by users last week, though the company said they have been in place for months.
'I understand you removed Pride month from the Google calendar,' one user wrote on the company's official support page on Feb. 4. '(I) disagree with this and would like to add it back.'
A Google product expert replied to the post adding that Pride was not the only change made to the calendar.
'They removed Black History Month, Indigenous People Month (and) Hispanic Heritage,' the person wrote, urging fellow users to 'let the team know you want this back.'
On Friday, a company spokesperson confirmed the changes to tech news site The Verge, saying it was no longer 'scalable or sustainable' for the Google Calendar team to continue to manually add 'a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world' to the platform after doing so for 'over a decade.'
'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,' spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld said.
To many, however, the move appears to be part of a growing trend among U.S. corporations to distance themselves from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts following President Donald Trump's executive order on 'ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs.'
It's also a sign that the company has joined a growing list of U.S. corporations to warm up to the president's anti-DEI agenda.
Over the weekend, Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum took to the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X to celebrate the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, following Trump's executive order aimed at 'restoring names that honor American greatness.'
'Another big win for President Trump's agenda,' Burgum wrote.
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