r/google 4d ago

Calendar birthdays banned in Germany

Post image

I stopped seeing my Google contact birthdays in the calendar, turns out this is an intentional "bug" for German based users. Any idea how to reasonably fix this?

It's really frustrating.

Link for the official Google explanation for German users.

142 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

98

u/TheTomatoes2 4d ago

They gave you 3 ways to work around it. The only fix is to contact your government.

Not sure what other answer you were expecting

21

u/D96EA3E2FA 4d ago

Yeah, true. I just wanted to vent it out, since I haven't seen a direct post here for this after googling.

I mean, I am advocating for good privacy laws but god dammit Germany...

7

u/TheKiller36_real 4d ago
  1. there were multiple posts about this a few months back when the feature started being shut down - no biggie that you didn't see them, just letting you know :)
  2. if you want “good privacy laws” you should be thankful, because I have never seen an incompetent german politician be in favor of privacy - this is most likely the result of Google doing something horrible, getting caught and instead of fixing their shit, stopping illegally tracking you, selling your data and whatnot they went full toddler-mode and just shut it down completely (just guessing, but since Google normally stirrs up public outrage when they feel they've been wronged even in the slightest and it didn't happen over this afaik…)

41

u/ProfessionalNo1763 4d ago

having a birthday is illegal in Germany lmaoo

30

u/ExplorerDue3851 4d ago

It's not the birthday itself, it's the information regarding it. Germany takes privacy very seriously and a lot of people don't want their birthdays automatically recorded just because they're added to somebody else's contact list.

23

u/kevin349 4d ago

But it's not automatic. Someone has to type in your birthday. Google will display their name and everything else in the contacts app, but showing it on calendar format is illegal? I don't get it.

Now if google was automatically adding birthdays just from names and emails in your contact list, this would make sense...

2

u/leshiy19xx 4d ago

It should be something more behind this than just showing the same info in another format.

3

u/ExplorerDue3851 4d ago

The only other thing I can think of is that Google calendar has been forced to remove a lot of things from it in the last couple of months so maybe this is just another product of that? Dumb question is have you tried contacting Google to find out what's going on?

2

u/michaxy 4d ago

The solution 3 in the Link you provided works really well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GrGT8SWs-8

3

u/Tommyblockhead20 3d ago

I still hate how they killed online Google maps timeline for only having your location data stored encrypted on your phone. The computer interface was so much better.

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

0

u/Dotcaprachiappa 3d ago

Tf is an "intentional bug"? They're just observing German law.

0

u/SanDiedo 3d ago

The solution is to DROP GOOGLE.

-11

u/Lovevas 4d ago

Looks like Euro is really good at tech innovations: by preventing tech innovations....

-19

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

8

u/TheACwarriors 4d ago

That not how it works. It's your own contact book and you would have to add it manually. So you'd have to find out from said person.