Google's Capitulation

The biggest reason people cultivate empathy for others is to sell them something. And now Google doesn't want our money?

This was the promised year! In 2020, claiming he was shocked by the murder of George Floyd, Sundar Pichai, the Google CEO, set a goal to have 30% more of the company’s leaders from underrepresented groups by 2025. He laid this all out in a moving doc called “Our Commitments to Racial Equity.” (That word wasn’t banned then.)

You bought that? This year, 2025—the first year the percentage of always-meritorious white men in Google leadership was expected to hit a mere seventy—Google, in deference to Project 2025 and MAGA and Musk, dropped its pluralistic pretenses altogether.

Then yesterday the company went further. It announced that not only would the leadership never see such “underrepresented” groups in quantity; it was pushing them off the map entirely. And the calendar.

Google Maps now gives Trump’s jingoist name to the Gulf of Mexico. (Oh, and Apple Maps has done the same.)

And today, in a company-wide meeting, Google announced it is fully…scrapping all of its DEI goals! By 2025. Meaning today. As a bonus, it has retracted a pledge that it wouldn’t build AI for harmful purposes including weaponry and surveillance. Google has officially freed itself to do more harm—as much as it wants.

Google Calendar has also disappeared Black History Month, Pride Month, Women’s History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and many more popular, moving observances that weren’t bothering anyone.