I think this is a great startup idea and unique opportunity - create Google Maps competitor on promise to have Lake Ontario and Gulf of Mexico named correctly, along with a promise to ignore other possible renamings in future. :)
This isn't really on Google. Countries disagree on how things should be named. Google sources the US centric view from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
It was a very reasonable decision when it was made around 2008.
Do you really expect a US based company to go to legal war with the US government over something like this? Because there would 100% be repercussions it they did.
So you prefer google to be the arbiter of what are official names within each country?
I think the US administration name change is childish, dumb and short-sighted, but if the authority of geographical names in an area designates it as such then I think it should show as such within maps within that area, at least as long as the clarification is readily shown. The same already happens for things like "Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)" or "Myanmar (Burma)".
I guess the question comes down to: do you want google to show the map that your current locality decides to be their interpretation or do you want google to be the arbiter of what a global real map is? Or is there a third alternative that I'm not aware of? (BTW the UN is not a solution to arbiter every countries and languages terms for every country/area/city/lake/ocean/etc.)
I wasn't asserting that, I was only pointing out that they can call any feature anything they like on their own maps.
But no, I don't want them to take a political stance on every naming dispute. In this case, however, when the "dispute" is between a clearly incompetent president and the nation he presides over, yes, seeing companies standing up against the madness would be welcome.
The person responsible for the GNIS corruption and the leadership of Google are in essence conjoined twins. The tech oligarchs are not going to make decisions based on interests that aren’t aligned directly with their personal enrichment; and the GNIS Corrupter-in-Chief wields such personal interests rather effectively.
The pearl clutchers in the comments talking about “evil”, wow! Are you so ignorant of history and world affairs that you’d de-base the word “evil” for something so trivial like the patriotic renaming of a lake?
Trump Derangement Syndrome is such a thing these days, and Trump himself is all too aware of it. He loves to troll the indignant left and raise their blood pressure over trivial things.
One thing that does seem to be incorrect is that Google has a single name on the lake - Lake America, when surely that only applies to the American half. The US-Canadian border runs down the middle of the lake, so unless I'm missing something Trump's renaming only applies to the American half, and the correct way for Google to show it would be with different names for each half of the lake.
That's ridiculous! How do you rename half of a lake!
I say that there are two lakes. It remains for future generations to decide how the two lakes are apportioned. Perhaps each of them are coterminous, with the same boundaries, size and volume, but one is named "Lake America" and one is not. One is a lake in US waters, and the other is in some foreign country.
Perhaps of the two lakes, they are split in twain, and there is an international border running through the middle of these two distinct bodies of water. Perhaps vessels will littorally obtain right of passage in international waters, and undergo customs inspections before they can cross over the somewhat amorphous border between Lake Ontario and Lake America, and vice versa.
That's not really how local naming works. I call Germany Germany but the Germans call it Deutschland. There's not two Germany's, there's just one and I have a different name for it. It really doesn't matter if a geographic object is completely inside, partially inside, or completely outside a country's borders, they have an official or de facto name for it that could differ from what you call it.
If Google maps, or anyone else, is just going to label things in other countries according to the whims of Trump, then where does it end?
If Trump tells Google, and spends taxpayer money, to "officially rename" Ottawa itself "Poopietown", then should they do it?
Maybe we need a constitutional amendment to remove the president's power over place names, given that the founding fathers only considered a malevolent president, not one with the brain of a 5 year old.
You joke, but of course that is exactly the direction we're heading in, where a previously friendly border, both on land and in the water, becomes a hostile one where full border formalities do apply.
I remember years ago driving across the border at Niagara Falls at just being waved though, no passport required, when I said I was just on a day trip.
And the correct name in all contexts that matter is "Lake Ontario".
It's almost as if people don't know that "Ontario" is not a Canadian name, it's a native American one, and the province is named after the lake, not the other way around.
It was called "Lake Ontario" before Canada or the US even existed.
While they show Lake Ontario (Lake America) in the rest of the world, I would like to suggest that they apply a more patronizing treatment to the alias:
Absolutely. My point was not to agree with the new name, but to say that USA should not call themselves America (which is not just arrogant, but plainly incorrect)
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 46.5 ms ] threadGoogle Maps users, please report this aberration.
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Blame the person causing the GNIS updates.
Do you really expect a US based company to go to legal war with the US government over something like this? Because there would 100% be repercussions it they did.
I think the US administration name change is childish, dumb and short-sighted, but if the authority of geographical names in an area designates it as such then I think it should show as such within maps within that area, at least as long as the clarification is readily shown. The same already happens for things like "Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)" or "Myanmar (Burma)".
I guess the question comes down to: do you want google to show the map that your current locality decides to be their interpretation or do you want google to be the arbiter of what a global real map is? Or is there a third alternative that I'm not aware of? (BTW the UN is not a solution to arbiter every countries and languages terms for every country/area/city/lake/ocean/etc.)
No, but they are certainly the arbiter of what names they use on the maps they produce.
But no, I don't want them to take a political stance on every naming dispute. In this case, however, when the "dispute" is between a clearly incompetent president and the nation he presides over, yes, seeing companies standing up against the madness would be welcome.
Yes, because it’s so agonizingly difficult to `s/Lake America/Lake Ontario/g` in a data feed. Truly the engineering feat of our time.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is such a thing these days, and Trump himself is all too aware of it. He loves to troll the indignant left and raise their blood pressure over trivial things.
So now the question becomes, what national benefit is there to trolling the indignant left and raising their blood pressure?
Has this lowered the price of gas or groceries yet?
How is the national debt doing?
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/141604554855825408
I say that there are two lakes. It remains for future generations to decide how the two lakes are apportioned. Perhaps each of them are coterminous, with the same boundaries, size and volume, but one is named "Lake America" and one is not. One is a lake in US waters, and the other is in some foreign country.
Perhaps of the two lakes, they are split in twain, and there is an international border running through the middle of these two distinct bodies of water. Perhaps vessels will littorally obtain right of passage in international waters, and undergo customs inspections before they can cross over the somewhat amorphous border between Lake Ontario and Lake America, and vice versa.
2) You really had to choose that country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany
If Trump tells Google, and spends taxpayer money, to "officially rename" Ottawa itself "Poopietown", then should they do it?
Maybe we need a constitutional amendment to remove the president's power over place names, given that the founding fathers only considered a malevolent president, not one with the brain of a 5 year old.
I remember years ago driving across the border at Niagara Falls at just being waved though, no passport required, when I said I was just on a day trip.
And the correct name in all contexts that matter is "Lake Ontario".
It's almost as if people don't know that "Ontario" is not a Canadian name, it's a native American one, and the province is named after the lake, not the other way around.
It was called "Lake Ontario" before Canada or the US even existed.
Lake Ontario ("Lake America")
The quotes add a certain.. je ne sais quoi.
Edit: It seems others have figured this out before I did.