Online controversy continues to build over Google's decision to honor Cesar Chavez with its Google Doodle on Sunday instead of Easter.
While Google traditionally avoids Easter-related Google Doodles, the search giant has drawn the ire of some conservatives for choosing to honor the labor leader and activist.
Conservative website Twitchy has collected many of the responses, with some users threatening to switch their search activities to Microsoft's Bing.
Putting Cesar Chavez on the Google masthead is the best Bing ad I've seen so far.— Daxton Brown (@daxtonbrown) March 31, 2013
Not everyone sees the choice to celebrate Chavez as a conflict with Easter Sunday. As ABC Univision News pointed out, the conservative Catholic website First Things defended the doodle, writing:
"For Chavez, social reform was never merely external. Without peace of spirit and purity of heart, there was little point in pursuing justice. Collective bargaining, just wages, shorter workdays: for Chavez none of these made sense outside the fact of his risen Lord."
An Issue With Timing
Most of the public outrage over the doodle isn't so much on the choice of Chavez as much as it is with the timing. For some conservatives, the decision to both eschew Easter and celebrate a labor organizer is too much.
Cool for Google to not celebrate Easter but really?!!? Go to google.com.HAPPY Caesar Chavez day everybody! #HELIVES!— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) March 31, 2013
For its part, Google isn't showing the doodle in all countries. In fact, our searches of other Google country homepages only showed one other Google Doodle for today -- and that is in Israel. The Israeli Google Doodle is unrelated to Chavez.
A Google spokesperson told Mashable,
"We enjoy celebrating holidays at Google but, as you may imagine, it's difficult for us to choose which events to highlight on our site. Sometimes for a given date we feature an historical event or influential figure that we haven't in the past."
Lasting Consequences
While threats of a boycott are all over Twitter -- it's unlikely that the search-giant will face any real fallout from the Doodle. Still, it's a good opportunity for the company to evaluate public reaction to its Doodles.
Google Doodles used to be an occasional surprise, but in recent years the company has put more effort into making doodles not only more frequent, but also more elaborate. As a result, the featured doodle has now become part of a larger social conversation within our current digital zeitgeist.
Do you think Google made the right decision to feature Chavez today? Let us know in the comments.