Google is scaling back its diversity hiring goals, following a trend among US companies that are abandoning or reducing their DEI initiatives. This move comes after President Trump's executive order pressuring government contractors to drop DEI programs.
Google is scaling back its diversity hiring targets, joining a growing number of U.S. companies that have abandoned or reduced their diversity, equity, and inclusion ( DEI ) programs. This decision, communicated to employees in an email on Wednesday, follows President Donald Trump 's executive order aimed at persuading government contractors to discontinue DEI initiatives.
Like several other major tech companies, Google supplies some of its technology and services to the federal government, including its rapidly expanding cloud division, a crucial aspect of its artificial intelligence endeavors.Alphabet, Google's parent company, also signaled this shift in its annual 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. Notably, Google removed a statement from previous annual reports affirming its commitment to integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of its operations and cultivating a workforce reflective of its user base.Google generates the majority of Alphabet's annual revenue of $350 billion and constitutes almost the entire workforce of 183,000. 'We're dedicated to creating a workplace where all our employees can thrive and have equal opportunities,' Google stated in a response to The Associated Press. 'Over the past year, we've been evaluating our programs designed to achieve this. We've updated our 10-K language to reflect this, and as a federal contractor, our teams are also assessing changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic.' The language change also coincides with just over two weeks after Google CEO Sundar Pichai, alongside other prominent tech executives including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, supported Trump during his inauguration. Meta eliminated its DEI program last month, shortly before the inauguration, while Amazon suspended some of its DEI programs in December following Trump's election.Many companies outside the tech industry have also distanced themselves from DEI efforts. These include Walt Disney Co., McDonald's, Ford, Walmart, Target, Lowe's, and John Deere. Trump's recent executive order threatens financial penalties against federal contractors deemed to have 'illegal' DEI programs. If found in violation, these companies could face substantial damages under the 1863 False Claims Act. This law stipulates that contractors making false claims to the government could be liable for three times the government's damages.The order also instructed all federal agencies to select targets for up to nine investigations of publicly traded companies, large non-profits, and other institutions with DEI policies deemed to constitute 'Illegal discrimination or preference.' The challenge for companies lies in determining which DEI policies the Trump administration might classify as 'illegal.' Trump's executive order seeks to 'terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs' and other activities of the federal government, and to compel federal agencies 'to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.'In both the public and private sectors, diversity initiatives have encompassed a range of practices, from anti-discrimination training and conducting pay equity studies to actively recruiting more members of minority groups and women as employees. Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, has strived to hire more individuals from underrepresented groups for over a decade, intensifying these efforts in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which triggered a widespread call for greater social justice. Shortly after Floyd's death, Pichai set a target to increase the representation of underrepresented groups within the Mountain View, California-based company's largely Asian and white leadership ranks by 30% by 2025. Google has made some progress since then, but the leadership composition has not undergone a dramatic transformation.The representation of Black individuals in the company's leadership ranks rose from 2.6% in 2020 to 5.1% last year, according to Google's annual diversity report. For Hispanic individuals, the change was from 3.7% to 4.3%. The share of women in leadership roles, meanwhile, increased from 26.7% in 2020 to 32.8% in 2024, according to the company's report.These figures are not significantly different in Google's overall workforce, with Black employees comprising just 5.7% and Latino employees 7.5%. Two-thirds of Google's worldwide workforce is male, according to the diversity report
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