The Google Calendar app, used by over 500 million around the world, has recently removed Women’s History Month, Black History Month, Pride Moth, Hispanic Heritage Month, and many other widely observed holidays from its services. Google claims that these holidays were, essentially, “too hard” to keep up with. An official spokesperson stated, “maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable.” This would make more sense if this were some small independently owned organization, however, it’s Google. Google is a nationally used company with a net worth of $2.010 trillion and over 182,000 full-time employees. This is not a matter of lack of resources, money, or workers. The removal of these holidays has an apparent discriminatory nature, and it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of millions of users.
People are angry. The removal of these holidays is the removal of diversity, inclusivity, and, frankly, history from the website. Others are confused as to why Google is even taking the time to focus on this when there are much bigger issues to be dealt with in the United States. The act itself feels almost petty, and it is a blatant, disrespectful way of showing their support for right winged beliefs. The refusal to acknowledge these holidays, many of which have been part of society for decades, seems dangerously close to something dystopian. If we continue, disregarding our history, we’re at risk of history repeating itself.