According to reports, Alphabet's Google is scrapping its goal to hire more employees from underrepresented groups and reviewing some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This joins a slew of U.S. businesses scaling back diversity initiatives.

“In 2020, we set aspirational hiring goals and focused on growing our offices outside California and New York to improve representation," says Fiona Cicconi, Alphabet's chief people officer.

Following demonstrations against the 2020 police shootings of George Floyd and other Black Americans, Google was one of the most outspoken businesses calling for more inclusive policies.

CEO Sundar Pichai established a target in 2020 to increase the number of leaders from underrepresented groups by 30 percent by 2025. At the time, around 73 percent of Google's executives were men, and 96 percent were white or Asian.

After a well-known pioneer in artificial intelligence research claimed that the corporation unexpectedly fired her for criticizing its diversity initiatives, it started assessing CEO performance on team diversity and inclusion in 2021. In a 2024 interview with the BBC, Melonie Parker, Google's top diversity officer, stated that the business had achieved 60 percent of its five-year targets.

"This is a real attack on gains that workers have made in the tech industry through movements fighting against racism, gender, and LGBTQ discrimination, going back to the civil rights movement. This is part of a troubling right-wing, anti-worker trend developing within tech companies that AWU (Alphabet Workers Union) is committed to fighting against," says Parul Koul, a software engineer and the union's president.

Google, which provides the US government with cloud computing and other services, recently announced that it was examining revisions to President Donald Trump's policies that would limit DEI in the federal government and among federal contractors.

Fiona says, “Because we are a federal contractor, our teams are also evaluating changes to our programs required to comply with recent court decisions and U.S. Executive Orders on this topic."