Google Calendar users have expressed frustration after noticing that events like Pride Month, Black History Month, and Indigenous Peoples’ Month no longer appear by default. Other observances, including Jewish Heritage Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day, have also been removed.

A Google product expert confirmed the change, sparking criticism from users who believe the decision is politically motivated. Some called the move "shameful," accusing Google of bowing to external pressure.

Google, however, offered a different explanation. According to spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld, the company revised its Calendar settings last year to display only national holidays and public observances. The reason? Google claims its previous holiday list had become unsustainable to maintain. While the change has upset many, users can still manually add these events to their calendars if they wish to continue acknowledging them.

Find Google’s explanation of the change, as shared by spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld:

For over a decade we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar. Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing — and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable. So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.