Slashdot Mirror
Google Honors Veterans Day, Finally
theodp writes "It took nearly a decade, but Google has done a turnabout and is honoring Veterans Day with a special holiday design for its famous logo. Users who log onto Google's home page are greeted with three World War I-era helmets capping the letters 'o' and 'e' in Google's name. The decoration is a marked departure for the company, which has come under fire from veterans' groups for ignoring American holidays such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day since Google's inception in 1999."
Care to tell me why Google should feel "bad" about not celebrating (if you can call it celebrating) a holiday nobody outside the US cares about? Or rather, why should they be "forced" to consider some national holiday important?
Halloween, ok. It's more or less international by now. Christmas? Ok, as long as it's done in a way that isn't Christo-centric and includes other religions' celebrations (you know it's actually Midwinter, right? It's not like the Pope invented that one). I can see Chinese new year, as it's celebrated by Chinese people all over the world and not just by people in the PRC. Even the Sputnik launch makes sense, less in a commemoration of the achivements of the Soviet Union as rather a stunning achivement in technology (personally, I don't give a rat's behind who does something great as long as someone does it).
But memorial day (or whatever it is)? Hello? Ask anyone in Europe when that day is and you get a "What's Memorial day? Did they move our national holiday again?"
So what's next? Will we get pressure from other special interest groups to celebrate "their" holiday on Google? A special Ramadan frontpage? And one for Martin Luther King day? Hey, I'm quite pissed there was none for our great national holiday! Rant! Whine! Tantrum! I want one!
Could we concentrate on holidays that at least a sizable portion of the planet cares about?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.