封面故事：谷歌提供“特色假期”，显示在日历上，世界上 232 个国家地区适用。Alamy 拍摄。 Google offers unique holiday calendars for 232 countries and territories. Photographer: Alamy
大家好！ “彭博推送” 系列又 和大家见面了，我们略作改变，这次用“总结”方式对原文进行转述。
01 Summary in Chinese 谷歌很神奇地改变了“黑色二月”，二月份从此和其他 11 个月显示得一样了。
Verge 说到，谷歌最近的文化标注似乎都消失 了，例如，针对西班牙裔的 Holocaust Remembrance Day。美国政府一直担心所谓的 DEI，以及提醒功能，如果谷歌将产品调整成适应现有政府班子的，还会受到公众指责。毕竟，谷歌宣称，他们可能不再接受“多样性”，其实，特朗普一上任，这项措施就被宣布了。
appease Trump administration 应对特朗普政府
谷歌宣称，2024 年中开始，公司陆续下架了带有文化风格的假期。谷歌日历团队，自己人工地加了太多假期了！他们工程师认为“不可持续”，换言之，怎么可能每个人的日历都增加 100 多个假期呢？于是，重新采用大众的、国家标准的时间日期。美国版本，仍然含有很多假期，包括 St. Patrick’s Day，Memorial Day，Thanksgiving， Cinco de Mayo， Halloween。
reverted to 回复，归还
对谷歌来说还是比较奇怪的，去年 6 月时候，发现谷歌日历加了太多犄角旮旯的仪式。谷歌可是长期以来有恶作剧文化的，导致大家一开始都没在意。谷歌发言人说，他们不会解释 timing，可能很多来自于美国总统的言论。
superfluous observances 多余的仪式
clarity 清晰
discourse 论述
谷歌不会取悦所有人。尽管是用户的原因，谷歌永远都收到很多抱怨，纳入太多假期也会引起不满。人们觉得这家公司，强加于人一些多样性，关于人的多样性。
这次更新了日历，对 232 个国家和地区，这个时候你也意识到，谷歌经历了多少挫折。谷歌这次的日历改动，是追溯调整的，作者的原话如下：
It feels a bit Orwellian, as if the past was erased, and the erasure forgotten.
可能这个争议，对一些人来说是专家素材，即要很专业才会考虑到的点。但是作者相信，可能问题并没有那么深奥，只是你是否会注意这些节日，有争议的节日。例如，谷歌删了平安夜（Gosh...）。你懂的，一篇名为“平安夜之战”的文章出现在 Fox News 的日子不远了。
pundit fodder 专家素材
作者评论，原来挪威时间表的很多日期被移除，谷歌工程师再也不用担心被网友评论了！似乎和谷歌地图还能比较一番，关于如何使用数据的，其实设置边界都是不太合适的。原话：
so it doesn’t have to litigate border and labeling disputes.
可能谷歌也希望对于搜索出现不合适结果的免责，以及对于 AI 技术的谨慎使用。外包谷歌日历，就不用解释那么多。
02 Mail Content Cover Story: Google offers unique holiday calendars for 232 countries and territories. Photographer: Alamy
If you use Google Calendar in the US, you likely saw a reminder for Valentine’s Day on Friday and another for Presidents Day just yesterday. But you’ll no longer see February marked as Black History Month: Google has removed that entry from its default set of holidays and public observances.
As the Verge first reported, users have noticed that a slew of cultural markers recently vanished from Google’s ubiquitous scheduling service, including Holocaust Remembrance Day and references to Hispanic and Indigenous celebrations. With the White House warring against so-called DEI and woke values, critics wondered if Google had quietly scrubbed its calendar to implicitly appease the Trump administration or at least avoid ire from his supporters. The company, after all, told employees it was ending diversity hiring targets just two weeks after President Donald Trump reentered the Oval Office.
In a statement, Google said it made the decision in mid-2024 to pare down the number of cultural celebrations cited in its calendars around the globe. Its Calendar team had added too many listings manually over the years, the tech behemoth said, and the process had become “unsustainable”: “It just wasn’t feasible to put hundreds of moments in everyone’s calendars.” Instead, Google reverted to the general country-by-country standards from Time & Date AS, a Norway-based company that’s historically provided this kind of data to Google. Its US calendar still features a mix of federal holidays, such as Memorial Day and Thanksgiving, and other common celebrations, from St. Patrick’s Day to Cinco de Mayo to Halloween.
It seems odd that Google, in the middle of 2024, had an epiphany that it had inserted too many superfluous observances. This is a company that for many years celebrated April Fools’ Day with over-the-top prank product announcements and once changed the logo on its homepage to honor the Burning Man festival. A Google spokesperson wouldn’t provide more clarity on the timing, but it’s hard to imagine the “anti-woke” discourse of the presidential election didn’t influence the decision.
Of course, Google is never going to please everyone. Although users could simply uncheck a box to remove its defaults or subscribe to a third-party set of regional and religious holidays, Google’s online support pages still filled with complaints about what’s missing: If Easter is among the US observances, then why not Passover? What about Diwali? And, gosh, where’s Mardi Gras? But included holidays have also caused anger. “Google is forcing diversity on people who have no desire to be indoctrinated into Google’s racist agenda, ” wrote one user a few years back, objecting to “garbage non holiday events” such as Women’s History Month.
Multiply these gripes across the unique holiday calendars Google offers for 232 countries and territories, and you get a sense of how far down Google tumbled on this slippery slope. Arguably, the larger problem with its removing a bunch of listings is the lack of transparency. Google deleted Black History Month and other cultural items without disclosure, and it did so not only for 2025 and beyond but also for previous years retroactively. It feels a bit Orwellian, as if the past was erased, and the erasure forgotten.
Perhaps this controversy sounds like mere pundit fodder for Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, but I suppose it depends on your personal connection to the holiday in question. If Google deleted Christmas Eve, for example, one could imagine Fox News reviving segments on the “War on Christmas.”
By relying on holiday data from Norway’s Time & Date, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, Google can avoid making fraught judgments on what to include and exclude. It’s comparable to how Google Maps depends on data from official government databases, so it doesn’t have to litigate border and labeling disputes.
In other words, it’s a way to outsource or hide its values, not dissimilar to how it buries the reasons for particular search engine answers and artificial intelligence responses in the black boxes of algorithms and large language models. By outsourcing these calendar choices to Time & Date, Google doesn’t have to explain why its US calendar features Black Friday instead of Black History Month.
原文链接
长按/扫码，有您的支持，我们会更加努力！
|
4373
沪公安联网 31011502019103