Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' in Maps after government updates
Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' in Maps after government updates
In posts on X on Monday, Google said it will follow the government's lead in changing the names on its Maps app.
Reminds me a lot of after 9/11 when they tried to change French Fries to Freedom fries. That stuck about as well as water on teflon.
Anytime I hear someone complain about cancel culture I bring up freedom fries.
I cannot believe they bent on this at all. This isn't the will of the people or a problem we asked to solve it is the asinine rantings of a fucking baby. Why the fuck am I stuck in this timeline holy shit.
I'm trying to work out who this is for. Presumably his fan club will approve, but I don't think it was something that even they were particularly asking for.
Google; we're still calling it Twitter you think we're gonna start calling it Gulf of America just because a doofus says so?
why would that be Google's concern
well google always displays the locally official names and borders. so just business as usual.
but why does the president of the usa get to decide what places are called? isn't there a cartography department or something?
Yes. The United States Board on Geographic Names is the group within the Department of the Interior which handles these matters. They are a part of the executive branch. I suspect that you can follow a chain of delegated authorities through that board, up the civil service hierarchy, landing on the desk of the President.
This is an example of the system not accounting for, or being ambivalent about, the election of someone to that office with a fascist ideology.
I'll keep an eye out for a firefox plugin to change it back.
This idea originated as a Stephen Colbert joke in 2010. As always I'm sure some will call this some sort of self-aware troll by Trump, but what are the odds of that.
Given Colbert took the absurdity of conservatism in the US and cranked it up to 11... I'm not surprised it's becoming reality now.
One of my favorite funfacts about the Colbert Report is that many conservatives couldn't tell it was satire.
So much so that Colbert earlier on was regularly invited to things like White House Dinner with Bush and Conservative Conferences. Even when he ended the show he claimed he had a lot of fan mail from Republicans saying they'd miss "Having a sane voice of reason on an otherwise liberal media network."
Some Conservative Subreddits even had to have guidelines explaining he was satire, some claiming he was a straight up "Left Wing Disinformation Agent!"
"The Trump administration has passed a resolution saying that Mexico will now be called 'America South' and Canada 'America North'. Google said it will follow the government's lead in changing the names on it's maps app."
Why would google, a company of such unfathomable power and reach, be fearful of Trump? They can say no and it won't affect their bottomline much.
Google, or rather Alphabet, is an American company. Trump is the president of America, the most powerful country militarily and economically. Alphabet is also subject to American laws and is currently under an anti-trust lawsuit with America. What makes you think Google can stand up against the US?
Fearful, or in agreement with?
The only thing they care about is money. If their bottomline doesn't benefit, they don't do.
Unless the CEOs are worried they'll have a Trump supporter shoot them dead and then be immediately pardoned and released by Trump.
Keep reporting it as a bug.
There's little point in doing so, other than the feel-good moment. Google, and all other mapping companies, ultimately take their data from official sources. This differs per country, so users of maps from outside of the US will continue to see Gulf of Mexico, but complaining that it is wrong will only be ignored because they're following the data from the official US government source.
Can't imagine wanting to work for big tech these days lol. These companies had insane reputation in the 2010s. People thought working for Google was like working in willy wonka's chocolate factory. They really squandered their brand.
Sadly though this was never going to be avoided, sure they're leaning hard into conservative cult nonsense, but they were still on a downword optics trajectory. Its impossible not to have this happen in capitalism, it will always be inevitable that enshitifcation happens to milk profit from anywhere it can, and that will always look bad.
Wildly, people still think that about working at Apple, for now. I do see that changing slowly too though.
This is super dumb.
How are these morons so offended about the name of a body of water?
Their fragile ego is so completely shattered because Mexico "has a Gulf" and they "don't"? Little men with too much power.
Ultimate pettiness, show of power, or misdirection from other, more concerning news.
Could be all at of those or something entirely different, but it sure is pathetic.It's misdirection and makes any laws or regulations specifically mentioning the Gulf of Mexico no longer apply since "tHeRe iSnT a gULf oF mExIcO."
Yeah, I've been meaning to switch to OpenStreetMaps for a while now and this was the impetus to drop what I was doing and download it immediately. Fuck Google. So sick of this mask off tech plutocracy bullshit.
Edit: I've tried it a few times yesterday and today, and I like it. Works with Android Auto in my car, guidance voice isn't annoying, directions are accurate. Only complaint is I'm not sure how to search up a business and have the app map me to the nearest location. I need to dig deeper and figure out if I just haven't found it yet.
I would 100% drop GMaps if I could hit the directions button on a Google search and have it bring up OSM instead. Google Maps has been bugged for me for years and the maps app never gets the address from a browser search. I have to search for the business or address in the maps app itself for it to work.
The gulf of mexico vs gulf of america thread on the Open Street Map forum is interesting and worth a read.
https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-america-gulf-of-mexico/124571
The discussion seems to be focused around possibly waiting for one or more governing bodies to rule on the name change, or just going along with it and adding an alternate text for people who would prefer the old one, which I think is way more democratic than anything Trump had in mind when signing this XO.
I certainly prefer this over the blind deference that Google seems to have for an executive order that is functionally just direction to the state department and not legally binding in any way whatsoever.
What the hell. No one’s going to call it the Gulf of America, except for the magas, the rapist and his useless offspring.
This is 4 years of drivel and it’ll always be knows as the Gulf of Mexico.
The man in charge is the biggest moron to ever be given power to lead.
Electing a rapist seems like a very American thing to do, who also married an immigrant, which is very odd since he’s doing his best to stop immigration.
Something something racist rapist hypocrite.
Only hot and or under aged immigrants are acceptable. Specially if they have big natural boobs because that means new Americans with big natural boobs. I think penis-wise probably they might consider 8" and longer but must be very girthy. What do I know, I'm not a rapist politician. I could be totally wrong.
It's giving big "freedom fries" energy. Makes sense when you think about how much of a wet dream the post-9/11 circle jerk was (is) for conservatives. They're trying to recreate the same 2002 Republican, plastic-patriot distraction machine again.
I don't think it's gonna work as well because people could afford to eat Big Macs everyday back then. No joke, the economic situation is so dire I'm saving up to treat myself and my boyfriend to a fancy dinner date....
The dinner is at fucking Waffle House
Why is it that when Prez Asshole farts from his mouth, so many race to inhale the stench and call it a rose?
For what it's worth, this is how Google maps has always worked. Use Google maps in China and you'll notice that borders are in different places, HK,
TibetBhutan, the whole China sea, those are within China's borders. It's the same with Russia, crimea is just part of Russia if you use Google maps in Russia. If your country recognizes different borders or different names for places, that's what Google shows you in your country. It's basically either that or they can't operate in that country, so they don't really have a choice if they want to exist in that region.HK and Tibet are part of China in all maps. Did you mean Taiwan?
Well yeah, as of 6 years ago, after China invaded with military force, HK has been recognized as part of China on all maps. But Google showed it as part of China even before then.
And then yeah, I just remembered the wrong name, it was the border of Tibet/Bhutan that are in dispute, so parts of Bhutan display as Chinese territory.
Thanks for catching that.
This is so pathetic by Google.
They all bend the knee. Just wait until the persecution of political opposition becomes a thing.
They can name it how they want. They could name it piss puddle and the rest of the world wouldn't care, it'll still be Gulf of Mexico.
That's an interesting theory, we may just test that out.
But I suspect that ten years from now, it's name will be whatever it's been saying on the maps. Just ask New Yorkers (sorry, I mean new Amsterdamers).
New Amsterdam is different, that was hundreds of years ago before there were millions of printed maps and it's another thing to rename own landmarks after a conquest or something which isn't within your country.
They should change it to Gulf of $30 Eggs.
"Gulf of Trump" just go for the gusto you fucking spinless pussies.
I thought that name was already taken by the chasm in between his ears.
"Gulf of this will bring down the price of eggs"
I know it's not deliberate, but phrases like 'spineless pussies' are why women don't feel welcome on lemmy.
Is lemmy truly a left-leaning platform? Or is it yet another tech-bro circlejerk that cares more about the aesthetics of inclusivity? You all can't have your cake and it eat it too.
I've been sitting on moving off Gmail. Not anymore.
I'm sitting on moving off proton, hell I still have 80% of my stuff on Gmail too
I'm maining privateemail through namecheap (custom domain) and I've got no notes.
Still got an ancient gmail for legacy stuff, but will definitely be moving stuff off of that now.
I guess there's no way to forward gmail emails after I delete the account?
What are going to use for email now?
I think tutanota (now tuta) is pretty decent.
Someone feel free to correct if I missed something bad about them.
RiseUp, Disroot, Tuta...
Everyone report an error every day.
Give it negative reviews
Why? Google does this everywhere because naming is completely arbitrary and it makes sense to be up to date with current nomenclature. Poland changed name of Kaliningrad (Russian exclave that we border) to Królewiec (what it was called when it was part of Poland) in a similar manner to troll Russians and Google updated our maps as well. Apple didn’t in either case so you have options.
Two reasons. Firstly, it's the principle of the thing - fuck Google for sucking up to Orange Shitler. Secondly, because somebody, somewhere in Google gets to deal with the endless reporting - even if all that reaction is is to have to write a script to auto-ignore that exact thing because it keeps popping up and there's nothing they can do to stop it.
☞ https://www.openstreetmap.org
https://f-droid.org/packages/app.organicmaps/ or https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps
Organic Maps is a free Android & iOS offline maps app for travelers, tourists, hikers, and cyclists. It uses crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data and is developed with love by the community. No ads, no tracking, no data collection, no crapware.https://f-droid.org/packages/net.osmand.plus/ or https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand
This project aims at providing comfortable map viewing and navigation (routing) application for mobile devices. Particular stress lies with complete offline features (via pre-loaded offline map data) or economic internet usage.https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/akylas.alpi.maps or https://github.com/Akylas/alpimaps
Alpi Maps is a map application to help you prepare and enjoy your hike! Get all the info you need before you go, then enjoy all the data offline during your hike.OpenStreetMap also needs to deal with this kind of thing. In this case, several people already tried to add it to the map in some form of other, but generally not as something to actually be shown. There is a looong discussion about it here https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/gulf-of-america-gulf-of-mexico/124571 . General opinion is that it is (or will be) "the official name that the US says it has". In OSM you can invent tags for anything, so an object can have many names. Done like this, anyone using the data can still choose to give precedence to any "official US names that are not in common use yet". Later it may be upgraded ased on if it becomes a common alternative name, just in the US, or maybe beyond. All those options can have their own special tag. And only very motivated data users will ever show it to map users. But if you do a search for Gulf of America, you will be able to find it.
I used Organic Maps on my CalyxOS phone a few days ago to navigate a 200 mile car drive home to the Scottish Highlands, and it worked flawlessly. The first 50 miles were through parts of Fife that I was not familiar with. I left it on for the rest of the journey just to track my progress and test it out. Very impressed with it. Maps are detailed and downloaded to the device for offline use. I've finally managed to deGoogle my life completely and will never use another Google product or service again.
Hijacking this to plug contributing to OSM. Improving your local area is very rewarding and can pair well with some youtube binging. Take a look at your city and see if there are things you're interested in working on.
Except when it is frustrating and continually tries to send you through tiny "technically paved" service roads so you know anyone unfamiliar to the area would risk car damage because there is no way to mark a road as "low priority" or "only use if you live on that road".
Street complete is very awesome though! Especially for updating local businesses.
I love the app MagicEarth for turn by turn navigation GPS. It uses OSM!
Magic Earth is proprietary, though. You can believe their privacy policy, but I have trouble believing any privacy policy if I can't see the source code.
"Contains no known trackers" according to AuroraStore + free and no adds
https://www.magicearth.com/privacy/
will take a look, thanks
Ios: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1007331679 https://apps.apple.com/app/id934850257
Also fun fact the official apple maps app is mostly based on OSM.
is there anything android auto compatible?
i never use android auto so my help would be based on what i've read.
i tried magicEarth after the above comment. It's not foss but it seems more practical for driving and it is said to be a. auto compatible.
Yes, OsmAnd: https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/auto-car/
Wait... so... this was not a joke? They're serious?
There is absolutely nothing that is too stupid for republicans.
If the US had an actually functional political system they wouldn't get anywhere near power. They're all crazy and they don't care about anything that actually matters to people. But because there's only two parties they just go "biden bad" and everyone votes for them.
Another day another issue that completely doesn't matter at all to distract from the fact that our politicians are incapable of actually fixing any of our problems.
incapable of actually fixing
Or making them worse. He just upped taxes on the lower classes and gave the rich tax breaks... again.
Draining the swamp!
politicians are incapable of actually fixing any of our problems.
They're not incapable, they just don't care. They're your problems after all, not theirs.
How do people not understand that Google Maps is regional, and the region sees their official government-endorsed maps?
They never wasted any time thinking about that, I fear
I'm old fashioned. It's still the Gulf of Mexico and Pluto is still a planet.
I disagree on the Pluto stance because it being classified as a dwarf planet makes sense for various reasons and isn’t about the ego of a racist megalomaniac.
Pluto is still hot shit.
W.r.t Pluto then you're no better than those people denying science. The golf of Mexico's renaming is due to ego and politics, Pluto's classification is not
it's more so emotionally based because it's personified and I feel bad for poor Pluto 😢, not actually thinking that Pluto should in all scientific circumstances be considered a planet.
It's a lot different to vaccine deniers who don't trust meaningful science and evidence that actually effect the lives of people and can do real harm to the lives of others.
If you want Pluto to be a planet, have the definition of "planet" changed so that Pluto would fall within that definition.
Vote to change it to Gulf of Luigi
I support this.
But we should probably at least have a conversation with Mexico about it, since something like half of their country borders it. IDK, I failed geography.
Pathetic. Hopefully the rest of the world doesn't follow suit. Renaming it just for one of Trump's ego trips is not a good reason.
The rest of the world obviously will not follow suit, but foreign companies selling maps in the US will have to comply, so it is just another exception that need to be handled. Naming and boundary disputes between countries have existed for years, and map makers just make enough versions to satisfy every country.
It's my understanding that the executive does not have the authority to unilaterally change official geographic names. As of my writing this, the name “change” has NOT been adopted by the United States government. Congress granted that authority to the US Board of Geographic Names in 1890. Unless accepted by the US BoGN, it changes nothing. I suppose Congress could rename it if they passed a bill that the president signed into law overriding that authority for that specific case, but until they did so, it’s not official.
Here is the link to the US Geographic Names Information system page showing the current official name of the Gulf of Mexico: https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/search/names/558730. Note the list of accepted variant names, which still doesn’t include “Gulf of America”.
Google are saying here that they will only change it on maps if it's made official by the US Government, which has not happened yet. That's why they haven't made any change yet, and won't unless Trump gets the US BoGN to do his bidding.
Google made an issue of this by officially commenting rather than silently conducting business as usual (which would be changing the name when the govt source does).
They're trying to have their cake and eat it, I guess? Theoretically this would appease X viewers and Trump (who would move onto the next trending controversy), while stating that they are following usual procedure?
That's my read on it too. Trying to have it both ways, and not exactly succeeding at it.
This is a good reminder and sanity check. Things this big are rarely easy to change.
Except they’re waiting on bended knees aren’t they? They’ve show who their daddy is by announcing it.
Now US can start claiming islands just like China does with the South Sea
Time to ditch Maps then.
Open Street Maps needs more contributors!
Been playing the StreetComplete game, which is very much Pokemon Go but helping OSM data.
OSM unfortunately doesn't seem public transit friendly at all. I did a quick glance over some of the documentation and it mentioned:
Whilst OpenStreetMap is probably not the place for full timetable information, adding information about public transport infrastructure and services to the map means that we can provide basic routing services.
Timetables are a must if you realistically want to use it for public transit. Currently it just tells me to walk to my destination for an hour and a half if I select public transportation. This is the main thing keeping me from using OSM.
Whoa, I did not know that existed. Time to give OSM some loving back.
Hey great idea, is there an open street maps app?
I found the StreetComplete one here
Awesome! That'll give me something to do on my runs.
So why didn't they change Crimea to be part of Russia, if that's always been the longstanding policy, Google?
(Note; I'm not suggesting it is a part of Russia; just pointing out the hypocrisy of Google since Trump claiming ownership of the Gulf of Mexico is the same thing as Russia claiming ownership of Crimea.)
It’s not the same. Google is a US company.
It makes sense that it would use the GNIS, a system of the USGS, to put names on places.
It hasn’t changed here yet, but I figure when it does, Google will reflect the change.
https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
They did (in Russia). There's no hypocrisy here. Just blanket compliance with local authority.
The maps look different when viewed in different regions, this becomes apparent whenever there's contested territory, like crimea, the China sea, Gaza. We only see the maps that our local government approves.
Cowards and sycophants. But this is a problem I, as a Chicagoan, am already familiar with. You see we have this building called the Willis Tower. But everyone here knows that Willis is correctly spelled "Sears."
So you see, the correct spelling of the America in the context of the Gulf is "Mexico."
Same problem in toronto.... We have a building called the SkyDome, but everyone misspells it Robbers Center....
Huh, I didn't know the Sears Tower was renamed to Willis. Though the Sears Tower never comes up in conversations for me, I'll surely only ever know it as Sears. So yeah, that's a great point you make
And what about taking a nice drive down Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable Lake Shore Drive?
Oh so it'll become a shibboleth like how the capital of Ohio is pronounced and spelled "central ohio" if you're at the rare intersection of cool and ohioan
Jesus fucking christ
This should be only for users in that shithole.
Step 1: Rename "South China Sea" to "'Murica Sea"
Step 2: ???
Step 3: 🪖☢️🚀💥❓️🤔
WTF?
Mexico should rename Baja California to Península Pacífica.
That doesn't make much sense, since Baja California was named California before the US-State which even belonged to Mexico back in the days.
If anything Trump is going to change California to Ivankia or Putinstan, but I guess at that point California will rather rejoin Mexico.
Makes as much sense as changing Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America - which will go the way of Freedom Fries in 4 years anyway.
I propose eveyone rename it to "Gulf of low egg prices"
If you are close enough to it for the name to have any relevant reference, you're just guna say Gulf anyway.
True. This is how it is with [Arabian|Persian] Gulf.
Like a little bitches they are...
I don't recommend Google Maps anymore. It's a really shitty map. I've been reporting bugs for ages and they never fix them. Also the GPS is really terrible, it sets the road full of constant turns and forces you to drive on small narrow internal roads instead of normal open roads. The localisation option sucks too, it keeps showing me that I'm somewhere else and my position is always a few metres off and it's so delayed that you don't know if you've made a good turn or not unless you wait like half a minute. Also the glitches in the map, missing locations, blurry photos, random photos swapped around and extreme inconsistencies. It's crazy that this shit is still being used. I bought a dedicated GPS for a car and in my phone and PC, I use OpenStreetMaps or its forks.
Where did this gulf of America thing come from anyway. It just seems so left field. Was it a hot topic among the MAGA or something?
It just seems like he woke up one day and had an idea 💡
Someone was saying they want to rename it to work around the laws preventing drilling in the Gulf. It sounds really stupid, but that is on par for this shit show of an administration.
They're on this stupid renaming kick. Renaming all the "woke" names back to the "original" white slavers and racists these places originally honored. There are few enough brain cells and energy in government and this is what Trump is making them waste it on. Gulf of THE AmericaS would make sense but obviously the intent is to claim it as the US's.
You know what, sure whatever. It burns their political capital and it doesn't actively oppress people
Why not get right down to it and call it exactly what they want it for?
Gulf of Oil...
Could someone explain to me why are people irritated by this? I'm a foreigner.
Because the president should have no say in naming geographic locations that have long agreed upon names. And it’s a waste of money to have to replace all the maps and books with updated names.
There’s also no reason for Google to change anything. The US government has no power to make Google use this new name instead of the widely agreed upon name.
It’s a nod to the fact that if Trump says jump google will say “how high?” And no one with any sense likes that bigot.
Because it's a corporation bending over to the whims of a government trying to erase the name of a geographic place.
Why not change it back to “Freedom Fries” while you’re doing dumb shit? Gives us something to laugh about for the next 20 years at least.
Any chance there's a place we could all start submitting bug reports about the incorrectly named body of water? Once the change goes into effect we should post that everywhere and see if we can swamp Google.
They’ll regex those bug reports so fast it won’t even matter.
I am so glad that I switched our app over to OSM last year.
Fuck off google🖕🏼x2
Here google. It's correct here. Nothing to change.
E: i love the DV, denying geography lol
So many important issues affecting America right now ..... and the country and its government is fixated and pouring so much energy, manpower, knowledge, education, experience and capability into .... renaming something on a map that no really gives a shit about.
You misunderstand, that’s exactly the point. Giving you something to talk about, while rights are eroded elsewhere.
Why is anyone using twitter anyway? Bring back blog post press releases
I have a tiny penis. But I know a guy who has my real penis. I call his penis my penis. Trust me guys, its big!
Of course they will.
I want off this ride.
Yeah, I'm with you.
This timeline took a serious nosedive somewhere around 2010. I'm no longer sure think we're pulling out of it...
Pussies
It's only the Gulf of America in the United States lol
The United States of Northern Mexico?
Google added that the name Gulf of Mexico will remain displayed for users in Mexico. Users in other countries will see both names, the company said.
Yeah. "Both Names" for other countries is a bit lame but better than just Gulf of America everywhere.
The Denali / McKinley thing is pretty awful though. I hadn't realised Trump had changed that too.
The Left: its called an Allow List now, you racists! The Right: its called the Gulf of America, you commies!
Jesus, we're pathetic.
One is propaganda made up by right wing nerds and one is the president of fucking america if you didnt catch how silly you were being right now
Nobody calls it that though. No one who is actually left-wing thought that calling them blacklist / white list was offensive.
Is this another of those things where someone wrote some mild Substack post about “maybe the phrase black list does imply black = bad” that maybe five people read before conservatives decided that it represents the ideological position of all leftists?
We?
I mean if Turkey can just decide to change it's name and everyone has to respect it (not me Turkey it is), I don't see why this is different
Yes but thry changed their own name, not the name of some other bit of the world that isn't anything to do with them.
Türkiye had historical usage and precedent; “the Gulf of America” does not. Admittedly, Erdoğan was probably motivated by the same base nativist urges. But there’s something substantially different in saying “we want our nation to be called this” versus “we want to rename international territory.”
Time to stop using Google
Humanity is a joke.
@return2ozma we should collectively boycott this and call the Gulf of Turtle Island just to piss Mr. Orange off
European golf players now name this gulf: The Gulf Of Trumps Lost Golf Balls
So If I use the flatpak app on Linux would it actually be able to know i'm in the US? I don't use any sort of location services.
Geolocation is done by IP address if nothing else is available. It's not exact, but if, for example, you use a US-based internet provider, all their customer IP exit points will already be marked as US-based, and any access from one of those to a Google service will get the new name.
