Many people online, myself included, were initially upset about the perceived removal of Black History Month and other culturally relevant days from Google Calendar. It seemed to some like this change reflected a broader societal shift away from diversity, equity, and inclusion. However, that wasn’t the case.

Here’s what Google had to say about the change:

“Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of moments in a wide number of countries around the world — things like cultural celebrations, teachers days and many more. We got feedback that many other events and countries were missing, and it just wasn’t feasible to put hundreds of moments in everyone’s calendars — so in mid-2024 we made the decision to simplify and show only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com. Contrary to some of the comments on social media, this was not something we did just this year.

Some important things to note:

Showing public holidays and national observances, rather than a broader set of moments, is consistent with other major online calendar providers. Google Calendar is also customizable, so users can more easily add important moments to their calendar.

As a company, we continue to celebrate and promote a variety of cultural moments across our products, visible to people everywhere — as you saw in the last few weeks with Black History Month and Lunar New Year.”

I admit, I was duped by these headlines that caused my frustration.

The Verge, specifically, was the first headline and article I read on the subject and I was infuriated. The Verge even made sure to make Google’s clarification on the change as far under the fold and away from the reader’s eyes as possible. The Verge’s article emphasized the negative aspects of the change. Though I don’t like it and Google is still doing things I’m not 100% okay with, it’s stuff like this that happens that frustrates me with The Verge sometimes. Ultimately, as a reader, I need to do a better job at not letting headlines get the best of me.