Google latest tech giant to scale back DEI quotas

The term ‘Googling’ has taken on a whole new meaning after the tech giant became the latest corporate behemoth to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In its annual report released on Wednesday, Google parent company Alphabet quietly removed a statement that had appeared in reports from 2021 through 2024, which said the company was “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.”

Although it was just one line, The Wall Street Journal said it marked a major shift for the company that had pledged to increase leadership representation of underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025 in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

Instead, Google is now taking a more neutral stance, stating: “Google has always been committed to creating a workplace where we hire the best people wherever we operate, create an environment where everyone can thrive, and treat everyone fairly. That’s exactly what you can expect to see going forward.”

It comes as a growing number of major corporations are abandoning their DEI departments — both before and after former President Donald Trump returned to office — marking a significant reversal from the commitments made in 2020.

Google joins Amazon, Meta, and others in scrapping hiring targets and scaling back diversity programs. 

Meta disbanded its central DEI team in January and ended hiring targets for women and minority candidates, citing “a changing legal and policy landscape.”

Likewise, Amazon announced in December that it would phase out several DEI programs by the end of 2024 and removed the phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for business” from its website.

Thus far, only Apple has notably faced — and resisted — shareholder pressure to eliminate DEI initiatives, with conservative groups pushing to remove diversity-focused policies.

In its announcement, Google explicitly referenced recent court rulings and Trump’s executive orders curbing DEI in federal agencies and among government contractors as a factor in its decision-making.

But even before Trump’s return to the White House, the US supreme court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions triggered lawsuits challenging corporate diversity programs. Now, with Trump signing new executive orders limiting DEI policies in government and federal contracting, companies are reevaluating their initiatives to avoid potential legal and regulatory challenges.

The trend is particularly striking given the rapid expansion of DEI commitments in 2020, when several companies set ambitious diversity goals in response to the racial justice movement sparked by George Floyd’s killing.

The DEI dust up suggests a new era of corporate policy, one in which diversity initiatives are increasingly framed as legal risks rather than business priorities, analysts said. 

Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently took to Joe Rogan’s podcast to remark that “a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered”, suggesting that modern businesses would "benefit from more masculine energy."

While not illegal, such statements “could be used as evidence in discrimination cases, reinforcing claims that the company fosters a biased environment,” said the Hr Grapevine website.