Summary
Google Calendar users are upset after noticing that events like Pride Month, Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Jewish Heritage, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Hispanic Heritage were removed from default settings.
Google confirmed the change, stating that maintaining a manually curated list of cultural observances worldwide was “not scalable or sustainable.”
Instead, Google has reverted to only displaying public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com, with users now responsible for adding other events manually.
I, with nothing but a criminal amount of free time and a splash of insanity, could probably maintain a nearly perfect, up-to-date, and highly detailed list of every single major holiday observed in the world, and I’m a dumbass with no money. Pretty sure Google could afford a couple extra holidays if they cut the budget of the racism department.
Ohhh black history month!
I was thinking BMarton MLuther MKing! But now that makes more sense!
Exabytes of ad relevant data is one thing, but literally tens of different calendar events? How are they supposed to sustain that as part of their business model?
Good to have the gutless kowtowing reported on.
I’m honestly a little surprised at how quickly the big tech corps have not just cosied-up to Trump and Elon, but really done their best to pledge fealty and become part of the inner circle. When the winds change in the future I very much doubt liberals and leftists will ever forget that these big ‘Silicon valley liberals’ largely turned out to be a deception. The trust will be gone forever.
…I am sorry. This will be forgotten in instant. Not because people forgive easily, but because these companies offer what for most people is part of their lifestyle.
You’re probably right, but I hope you’re wrong.
If you’re wrong it’ll mean a lot more people moving to OSS and Fediverse networks, which would be a very positive outcome
Oh no, they can track hundreds of millions of devices, profile and serve ads to them instantly, but calendars… Grrr!
/s
Glad I already bailed on google services already.
Capitulating to fascists is never a good look.
Ultimately Hitler’s Birthday will somehow become ‘sustainable’ for these corporate bootlickers.
Hitlers Birthday? Don’t you mean 420 Blaze It day?
Til google can’t maintain a list…
Today??
But they can put a new logo doodle for a different event every day of the year, over multiple years?
I wonder if they left MLK day on the calendar?
It’s a federal holiday, so yes.
…for now.
Prob rename to trump inauguration day…
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I’m ok with this. It’s less clutter if all you want is to see public holidays, and it’s easy enough to install calendars that show other events.
Unpopular opinion maybe, but I’m ok with this. It’s less clutter if all you want is to see public holidays, and it’s easy enough to install calendars that show other events.
Well it’s not unpopular so to speak… had they never included them that would be one thing… Hell had they removed them 2 years ago that would have been a fine decision. On the other hand removing them right now… it’s quite blatently obvious the motivation isn’t decluttering. It’s about making sure the racists in power don’t have to look at anything that might make them unhappy.
I agree that the motivations aren’t good (and I’m also critical of many of the things that big tech companies are doing to pander to MAGA) but it’s still a functional improvement in my opinion. I just see the decision as a “even a broken clock is right twice a day” sort of scenario.
Be that as it may, the real motivation for this change likely has nothing to with “less clutter” and more with pandering to the MAGA crowd.
Same here. I’ve never been fond of the proliferation of these “think about <minority> for a moment!” holidays. They’re the main thing that comes to mind when I think of what’s “performative.”
Better performative than being able to ignore completely.
