For years, Google has used its online services to remind users about cultural events. Many of us got used to relying on Google to remind us through its calendar app about the arrival of cultural occasions or observances.
Sometimes, the reminders were annoying, at least for those who weren’t interested in the event or observance. Nonetheless, we learned to cope by simply glossing over the ones we aren’t interested in or used the nugget as a piece of cultural trivia.
But there are some annual observances and occasions in which we and our community are interested. And we felt a sense of pride and recognition that events like Jewish American Heritage Month and International Holocaust Remembrance Day were universally listed in printed and online calendars, just like other public holidays and national observances.
But then things changed, and many of the observance listings disappeared. Google’s calendar app stopped listing Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Pride Month, Women’s History Month, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and several others.
Google says it removed the calendar observances for administrative reasons. It claims that the maintenance of hundreds of event and observance listings each year for different countries around the world is neither scalable nor sustainable. But critics are skeptical.
Critics have seen Google and other big tech companies react to conservative complaints about biased or woke policies and see Google’s cleansing of cultural observance entries from the calendar app — which is used by more than 500 million people — as another step in submission to the culture war being led by President Donald Trump.
Of course, not all holiday and event entries have been removed from Google’s calendar. There’s still Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Christmas and several others. But most of the cultural or identity-based observances and listings are gone.
The move prompted the newly created Congressional Jewish Caucus to write a letter of protest to Google CEO Sundar Pichai last week, urging Google to restore the default listings for International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish American Heritage Month to the calendar app. According to the letter, signed by every Jewish House Democrat, “Google’s decision to remove Jewish references from its default calendar is tantamount to a gut punch for the American Jewish community and is a repudiation of [Pichai’s] previously stated commitment to combat antisemitism.”
The letter argued that removal of International Holocaust Remembrance Day will worsen growing issues with a global lack of awareness and denial of the Holocaust, noting that while “reversing Google’s decision will not stop hate or antisemitism in its tracks, … it will serve as an effective and necessary tool to combat this most ancient hatred and uplift the Jewish American community.” And the letter warned that “choosing to remain silent in the face of these ageless animosities, however, is a conscious decision to aid them.”
Google’s decision to limit cultural calendar listings may be pandering to the right, but it isn’t antisemitic. Nonetheless, if listing the two Jewish-related observances will help combat misinformation, Holocaust denial and hate, we join in the request that Google reinstate
those listings.
