Google has been using its popular online services for years to remind users of cultural events, making the agenda app for occasions such as Black History Month and Women's History Month.
Last week, some users noted that the popular app no longer display those observations, as well as a litany of others, which produced an online recoil from some users who saw it as another sign that Google turned against more liberal geeches.
But Google said that for apolitical reasons it removed the calendar observations in the middle of last year. Every year hundreds of moments manually maintain for different countries “was not scalable or sustainable,” said a Google spokeswoman in a statement.
The late commotion happened when Google and other major technology companies seemed to respond to conservative complaints that their products and policy have been biased. Last week, Google eliminated its goals to specify how much diversity it wanted in his workforce and said that as a federal contractor it had to meet the executive orders of President Trump against diversity, equality and inclusion policy.
The calendar contamination followed Google and Apple's decisions to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico in Gulf of America in their card applications after Mr Trump ordered the name change.
Google Executives also said on Wednesday that they would stop offering diversity training programs and updating other training efforts that Dei content have, the Guardian reported.
For more than a decade, Google has worked with TimeAnddate.com (a website that shows the time, date and large holidays in places around the world) to label holidays and national observations, such as the day of the presidents and Labor Day. A few years ago, the spokeswoman said, the Google calendar team began to mark a wide range of cultural moments in countries around the world, and the company was asked to add more events and countries before it decided that it was too inconvenient.
Google Agenda -users noted that references to the Spanish Heritage Month, Pride Month, Jewish American heritage month and Holocaust Remembrance Day were all disappeared. Google Agenda again shows only observations of TimeAnddate.com, including Memorial Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and users can add other moments, the spokeswoman added. The Verge first reported the calendar changes.
The agenda of Google is used by more than 500 million people for work and personal reasons, and some of them mocked the explanation of Google that it was too difficult to keep track of every occasion.
They pointed out that Google “in it managed to keep Columbus Day somehow.” As a federal holiday, Columbus Day is still automatically marked on Google's agendas.
Another user said that the shift felt like an attempt to rewrite history “, while others adopt the changes as a sign that Google tried to appeal to Mr. Trump.
Google said that in some countries the celebrations on the calendar were the day of teachers. While they have disappeared, the company said that cultural moments actively celebrated and promoted in its other products.
In the past two weeks, the Black History Month marked with an animation on the search page and a YouTube playlist. And it observed Lunar New Year with a search deadly and a compound collection of films on Google TV.
