Google Kills Diversity Hiring Targets

Google is eliminating its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and reviewing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs, joining other tech giants rethinking their approach to DEI.

In an email to employees Wednesday, Google said it would no longer set hiring targets to improve representation in its workforce.

In 2020, amid calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd, Google set a target of increasing by 30% the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” by 2025.

Parent company Alphabet’s annual report released Wednesday omitted a sentence stating 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.” The sentence was in its reports from 2021 through 2024.

Black and Latino people have long been underrepresented in the tech industry. Google’s 2024 diversity report said 5.7% of its U.S. employees were Black and 7.5% were Latino. Four years earlier, those figures were 3.7% and 5.9%, respectively.

Google said it was evaluating whether to continue releasing annual diversity reports, which it has done since 2014. The evaluation is part of a broader review of DEI-related grants, training and initiatives, including those that the email said “raise risk, or that aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped.”

Google also said it was reviewing recent court decisions and executive orders by President Trump aimed at curbing DEI in the government and federal contractors. The company is “evaluating changes to our programs required to comply,” the email said.

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