Google has abandoned its diversity hiring targets, joining a growing list of companies scaling back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This move follows a presidential order pressuring federal contractors to drop DEI programs. Google cites recent court decisions and executive orders as factors in the shift. The tech giant, facing potential financial penalties for non-compliance with the order, has removed its commitment to diversity from its annual 10-K report.
Michael Liedtke / APSAN FRANCISCO — Google is scrapping some of its diversity hiring targets, joining a lengthening list of U.S. companies that have abandoned or scaled back their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also signaled the shift in its annual 10-K report it filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In it, Google removed a line included in previous annual reports saying that it’s “committed to making diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do and to growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.”
The change in language also comes slightly more than two weeks after Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other prominent technology executives—including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg—stood behind Trump during his inauguration. Trump’s recent executive order threatens to impose financial sanctions on federal contractors deemed to have “illegal” DEI programs. If the companies are found to be in violation, they could be subject to massive damages under the 1863 False Claims Act. That law states that contractors that make false claims to the government could be liable for three times the government’s damages.
In both the public and private sector, diversity initiatives have covered a range of practices, from anti-discrimination training and conducting pay equity studies to making efforts to recruit more members of minority groups and women as employees.
Technology GOOGLE DIVERSITY HIRING DEI TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER FEDERAL CONTRACTOR TECHNOLOGY
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