Google is chickening out when it comes to animal products in its food emojis. Or, maybe the tech giant is taking a brave stance on inclusion and diversity by appealing to its vegan users.
Either of those choices is yours to make depending on which side of the food aisle you land after a Google art manager and designer announced that half of a hardboiled egg was being plucked out of a salad emoji visible to users of the Android operating system.
There's big talk about inclusion and diversity at Google so if you need any evidence of Google is making this priority may I direct your attention to the ? emoji— we've removed the egg in Android P beta 2, making this a more inclusive vegan salad. pic.twitter.com/kzHY0A9ZjG
— Jennifer ??️ (@jenniferdaniel) June 6, 2018
The tweak was, of course, mocked by a Twitterverse caught eating over its keyboard. Some said they were equally offended by tomatoes. Others said they preferred to eat salad on a plate rather than a bowl. And people like me couldn’t have told you what was even in an Android salad (which sounds like something special that happens between C-3PO and R2-D2 in prison).
For what it’s worth, the Apple emoji salad has onions in it, which will probably stick with you longer than that egg.
Jennifer Daniel, the Google emoji tweaker, followed up on Twitter by saying that the change was made to make the emoji better comply with unicode’s guidelines for the artwork. (Her Twitter feed is full of examples of fun adjustments being made to assorted emojis.)
Hello carnivores, vegans and everyone in between! Just want to clarify that the goal of salad emoji redesign was to create an image more faithful to unicode's description. "A bowl of healthy salad, containing lettuce, tomato, and other salad items such as cucumber." Bon appetite!
— Jennifer ??️ (@jenniferdaniel) June 6, 2018
We’ll have to wait and see whether this entire ordeal rises all the way up to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, as it did when the stacking order of meat, lettuce, cheese and tomato on the emoji hamburger became a national crisis last fall.
h/t to CNET for beating me to this while I was at the real salad bar.
