Google has removed references to Black History Month, Women’s History Month, LGBTQ+ holidays, and other cultural observances from its online and mobile calendars, a move that has sparked criticism from users.
Previously, the tech giant marked key events such as the beginning of Black History Month in February and Pride Month in June. However, these events are absent from Google Calendar for 2025. The change was first reported by The Verge last week.
A Google spokesperson, Madison Cushman Veld, explained that maintaining an extensive list of observances worldwide was unsustainable. “We received feedback that some other events and countries were missing, and manually managing hundreds of moments globally was not scalable,” Veld stated. As a result, the company decided in mid-2024 to display only public holidays and national observances sourced from timeanddate.com while allowing users to manually add other significant events.
The removal of these holidays comes amid broader shifts at Google following the start of Donald Trump’s second term as US president. The company recently announced rollbacks of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in compliance with Trump’s executive orders limiting DEI programs in federal agencies.
Additionally, in late January, Google altered US users’ maps to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and reverted the name of Denali, Alaska’s tallest mountain, to its former designation, “Mount McKinley,” in line with Trump’s directives.
Many users have voiced frustration over these changes on social media. Now, those who wish to track events like Pride Month or Indigenous Peoples’ Month must manually add them to their calendars. It remains unclear whether these adjustments will also impact Google Doodles, which have traditionally celebrated these cultural observances with digital artwork.
