> But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it.
Well if you think about it the “don’t be evil” slogan was never really true in the first place.
The expansion of the internet advertising industry, addiction algorithms via YouTube and/or other dark patterns, and more were pretty evil from the start. If you need a slogan to remind you to not be evil, maybe you shouldn’t be anywhere near power. It’s one of those tells in advertising - if you have to tell me you are something you probably aren’t whatever you are claiming to be.
Renaming Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America just aren’t in the same room in terms of “evil” things. Annoying perhaps? Sure. Evil? Not. A. Chance.
Nobody really cares about this stuff in day-to-day life besides people who desire to be outraged as a way of entertaining themselves or mask over some other personal deficiency they have.
What countries call it the South China Sea? What does France call the English Channel?
Had this occurred 100 years ago we wouldn’t even be talking about it today.
Looks like the French name for the English Channel is La Manche (The Sleeve) and many other countries follow this name. Whatever you think of renaming things, however, the policy of giving all the names for a place was a good one.
It's an ok policy. For example I don't want to see "Chinese Taiwan/Republic of Taiwan" when I view Taiwan on a map as an America. It's just Taiwan to me and I'm not concerned with what people from other countries call it.
Same thing basically with the English Channel. It's just the English Channel. I don't want to see a bunch of different names for it. If the French want Google to show it as La Manche for French people that makes sense.
And then there are European countries that just use a combination. Germany has 'Ärmelkanal' (literally: sleeve channel). If you can't make everyone happy, make everyone angry.
Technology has advanced since 2008, so it's not surprising the policy has changed.
In 2008, Google Maps served static image map tiles -- so everyone would see the same labels regardless of where they were. Now, the map tiles are vectors that are rendered on the fly, so they can customize what each user sees based on their country.
So users in the US see "Gulf of America" and users elsewhere see both.
This is the one I find most hilarious, as Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around. So the temper tantrum reaction in trying to spite Canada wholly misses the mark.
Funny thing is the 2025 Gulf rename kind of follows this policy by region. US users get Gulf of America, Mexico gets Gulf of Mexico, and everyone else sees both labels.
No, it doesn't. Quoting the document: "If different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it" (emphasis in original).
This sounds to me like for all users it should display both names. Perhaps to US users it displays "Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)" and everywhere else it displays "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)", although the literal text suggests it should say "Gulf of Mexico" in an area of the map closest to Mexico and "Gulf of America" in an area of the map closest to the US.
"By saying "common", we mean to include names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming. In other words, if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage. "
They violated their own policy with the gulf then.
I guess the "Maps" Team follows a different policy than the "Earth" team...
Although there is also no definition of "common usage". A new name might already qualify if the local government adjacent to this landmark announces to only use this new name from now on.
Reading the article, I assume this would cause the new name to be immediately shown in brackets next to the old name, or am I missing something?
The moment the president of the US renamed those bodies of water, it became commonly used in all sort of publications since then. It fits their description, no matter how silly.
Yes, a lot of publications reported on the presidents action. I do not have the same experience as you that there's widespread use of the alternative name outside of this context.
It's an american company, whatever they say come with an asterisk saying whatever they say it depends on what the powers in the USA decide (and it's the same for other countries with their own companies).
Anyway I don't think google should be the one choosing the names they call water bodies. They just need to use the official names for the IPs countries, and show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IPs.
> "show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IP"
I would maybe even welcome that approach at this stage, just to demonstrate the absurdity of those decisions.
They could actively encourage also other countries to rename all foreign landmarks as they please, to fast-track a separate "international naming" convention so people can again communicate across borders...
The great state of Indiana once declared that pi was equal to exactly 3. Should they also break all of their code by adhering to that falsehood because it was politically expedient?
Nah. Truth is a real thing, and I want to live in a world were facts are not dictated to us by failed gameshow hosts who happened to turn political in their retirement years.
It seems their actual policy is "the policy of Primary Local Usage":
"Under this policy, the English Google Earth client displays the primary, common, local name(s) given to a body of water by the sovereign nations that border it. If all bordering countries agree on the name, then the common single name is displayed (e.g. "Caribbean Sea" in English, "Mar Caribe" in Spanish, etc.). But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it."
Which basically means "multiple names until all bordering countries agree on the same name", if I'm not mistaken
The problem here is that the "primary, common, local" name used in a country sometimes conflicts with what specific government institutions in those countries may "officially" use.
In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US by English-speaking Americans is "Gulf of Mexico", but they decided to adhere to an artificial name change declared by a political figure, whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.
Not only that, but the only area he's authorised to name is a stretch of the US coastline and its EEZ.
He has no authority to name international bodies of water - i.e the large part in the centre where Google should be writing "Gulf of Mexico" because that's its name.
But he does have the ability to cause trouble for the giant corporations based in his country that serve map images to most of the rest of the world. The giant corporations also see that he grants favours for fealty. So it's actually the unofficial power he has that's the problem, rather than what's within his legal remit.
Wow, thanks for pointing this out. I'll do a mea culpa then. I was uncomfortable making Google the final arbiter of place names, as I didn't find a good reason why we should trust Google more than the democratically elected government of our country.
But I really like this policy. Even though it still relies on Google's definition of "common usage", it makes naming much less arbitrary and more sensical.
I was wrong in my previous analysis. Google had a clear, sensible, defined, published policy, and they broke it to appease a wannabe autocrat.
That was "Don't be evil" Google. This is "Do the right thing" Google, completely different. Here, "right" means "what's best for the company" and if that means bending the knee to a wannabe dictator, that's the right thing.
> As the publishers of a geographic reference tool, we believe that Google should not choose sides in international geopolitical disputes. For this reason, we've chosen to implement a uniform policy of Primary Local Usage.
Yeah, right, until a wannabe despot comes in and demands Google come lick its boots. In which case Google immediately complies with zero objection.
No, no, not "a" wannabe despot - specifically one from the United States and possibly Cina. You can be certain they would not care about the demands of, say, the president of Cuba.
Yes. There is some old regex (probably written 20 years ago) which automatically tries to improve the titles. One of the more silly rules is to remove "how" from the beginning.
Tech companies spent decades trying to sell themselves as an enlightened class of nobel philosopher kings.
This going all the way back to John Perry Barlow and a utopia in cyberspace to escape the right wing world of Reagan and Thatcher. But it reached its zenith around the "Arab Spring" with the idea that through connecting people the tech companies were giving voice to the voiceless and creating a new world of participatory democracy.
Many of us developed an interest in technology substantially because of the promise they were selling
Yet then, the moment they received the tiniest bit of pushback they all threw in fully and enthusiastically with Trump and are now even facilitating the Right Wing Internationale as we see with the Zuck trying to silence Lula supporters in Brazil.
It's basically the mother of all rug pulls and yeah, people are a little sore
mh, there's some truth to this, but I think it's much more that a split emerged in the community. There was originally a coalition between the social progressive movement and the techno-liberal/libertarian STEM side.
But all the stuff that happened from 2012 to 2024 had disenfranchised a lot of the actual engineers that do the real work with the progressive movement. There were a lot of early warnings, but they were ignored and instead silenced via social pressure.
Now the progressives are shocked that they couldn't just ratchet their causes ever further without losing support.
And it is crazy who the techno-libertarian side joined forces with, but it was also obvious this was bound to happen at some point. You can't just continually ignore the grievances of your allies and then be shocked when they turn against you.
The name of the mountain was changed. Note that mountains aren’t bodies of water, so the link is not relevant to this question, and Denali isn’t bordered by multiple countries, so Google presumably feels that the US has the right to name it.
And you’re getting downvoted because, as per the above, it’s an irrelevant question.
But I’ll indulge you just a bit more. The principle here is not “renaming things is bad!” The principle is that indulging an authoritarian who’s trying to unilaterally rename territory his country doesn’t own is bad, particularly when he’s doing so in a fit of pique (Lake Ontario).
As you may or may not be aware (I wasn’t), the Alaskan state legislature passed a bill in 1975 requesting that the mountain be renamed. Trump didn’t even try to get Congress to pass any bills before renaming things.
Hope this all helps clarify and gives you some reason to rethink the MAGA propaganda that tries to equate Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.
I believe it took less than three days, based on a quick search [0][1]. I did not read in detail to find out how much less.
It seems a clearer case of following a similar policy (though for land, not water), since Denali was already the primary, common, and local name for the mountain in Alaska, just not across the US as a whole [2]. I am not aware of the Gulf of America or Lake America as common names; the Gulf of America was occasionally a joke, though.
It's also not clear to me that it's fair to say "the Democrats renamed some mountain," since it was partly a clear response to an Alaskan request, made by both the Republican and Democratic Senators of Alaska [3], although the officials who made the final decision were all Democrats.
Of course, the solution described here is not a perfect one, (as perfect solutions don't really exist when it comes to messy human things like international politics) but it at least follows from an easy to identify set of principles on how ambiguous situations like these should be handled.
Then you look at the current day with the "Gulf of America" which fails to be primary, common, or local, and just get disappointed.
American president can ask many things. I am not sure of the legality of this name change, but to give you an example. Trump could ask an american citizen he wants to enter his property. The citizen can say "Fuck off you fucking moron" and slam the door in Trump's face since it is the citizen's personal property. So just saying the American president asked something doesn't necessarily mean you have to do that.
You will discover, as I have discovered, that it's not so easy to sever ties with people you dislike. Prepare yourself for a life of forced entanglement with some of the dumbest, most reckless people in society. They'll worm their way back into your lives, just to punish you.
>American president can ask many things. Trump could ask an american citizen he wants to enter his property. The citizen can say "Fuck off you fucking moron" and slam the door in Trump's face since it is the citizen's personal property.
So wild to be living in a time where the most powerful man in the world is very obviously turning senile and those that surround him choose to indulge his outbursts rather than address the problem.
@dang: title's off; the blog post is titled "How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth."
The how is operative, I think, since it changes the title from being about the process of how Google determines a name when it's there, to being about Google acting as some kind of rogue despot that goes around naming bodies of water.
"We want Google Earth to merit users' trust as an authoritative reference..."
I guess they've changed their minds since 2008... Their display of "Gulf of America" without "Gulf of Mexico" and "Lake America" without "Lake Ontario" is at odds with their declared policy.
> Donald Trump said Google rejected his request to rename the Atlantic Ocean after himself or America. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, the president said he had called Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, to ask whether the company could “handle” his proposal.
>According to Trump, Pichai rejected the latest proposal. Trump described the Google CEO’s response by saying, “No, no, no. This time I’m not doing it … Oceans are different, sir. They cover … a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
This article is not as pure as it might seem but I think this is also a post-hoc reasoning to explain what decision they went with for the "Persian Gulf" / "Arabian Gulf" decision, and Google then proceeded to change their stance on that in the following years:
"Google had previously put both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on its Google Maps. After May 2012, it removed both names from the body of water stating that it does not name every place in the world and that it did not want to take a political stance. Iranians complained about the change and started a Twitter campaign asking "Where's the Persian Gulf?".[66] Since 2016, Google Maps has displayed both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on the body of water and shows "either Arabian or Persian Gulf to local users, depending on geolocation and language settings."[67] Google Earth shows both names, unless viewed through a server from a Gulf Coast Arab country, in which case it labels it simply "Arabian Gulf"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute#:~...
Evidently Google in bending the knee with the America naming but I think they also haven't exactly taken a purely principled stance in the past either
78 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] thread> But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it.
The expansion of the internet advertising industry, addiction algorithms via YouTube and/or other dark patterns, and more were pretty evil from the start. If you need a slogan to remind you to not be evil, maybe you shouldn’t be anywhere near power. It’s one of those tells in advertising - if you have to tell me you are something you probably aren’t whatever you are claiming to be.
Renaming Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America just aren’t in the same room in terms of “evil” things. Annoying perhaps? Sure. Evil? Not. A. Chance.
Nobody really cares about this stuff in day-to-day life besides people who desire to be outraged as a way of entertaining themselves or mask over some other personal deficiency they have.
What countries call it the South China Sea? What does France call the English Channel?
Had this occurred 100 years ago we wouldn’t even be talking about it today.
Same thing basically with the English Channel. It's just the English Channel. I don't want to see a bunch of different names for it. If the French want Google to show it as La Manche for French people that makes sense.
I'm located south of the equator.
In 2008, Google Maps served static image map tiles -- so everyone would see the same labels regardless of where they were. Now, the map tiles are vectors that are rendered on the fly, so they can customize what each user sees based on their country.
So users in the US see "Gulf of America" and users elsewhere see both.
Just because the US has decided to smear faeces on their walls doesn't mean we all need to admire it.
This sounds to me like for all users it should display both names. Perhaps to US users it displays "Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)" and everywhere else it displays "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)", although the literal text suggests it should say "Gulf of Mexico" in an area of the map closest to Mexico and "Gulf of America" in an area of the map closest to the US.
They violated their own policy with the gulf then.
Although there is also no definition of "common usage". A new name might already qualify if the local government adjacent to this landmark announces to only use this new name from now on.
Reading the article, I assume this would cause the new name to be immediately shown in brackets next to the old name, or am I missing something?
Common usage is defined in the article as the widespread name used by the local people to refer to it.
Yes, a lot of publications reported on the presidents action. I do not have the same experience as you that there's widespread use of the alternative name outside of this context.
The only change I can read from it, is that they don't need to apply a renaming from Day#1
Anyway I don't think google should be the one choosing the names they call water bodies. They just need to use the official names for the IPs countries, and show lake america, gulf of america, ocean america, asian america, european america and african america if Trump makes it official, but only for the US IPs.
I would maybe even welcome that approach at this stage, just to demonstrate the absurdity of those decisions.
They could actively encourage also other countries to rename all foreign landmarks as they please, to fast-track a separate "international naming" convention so people can again communicate across borders...
Nah. Truth is a real thing, and I want to live in a world were facts are not dictated to us by failed gameshow hosts who happened to turn political in their retirement years.
"Under this policy, the English Google Earth client displays the primary, common, local name(s) given to a body of water by the sovereign nations that border it. If all bordering countries agree on the name, then the common single name is displayed (e.g. "Caribbean Sea" in English, "Mar Caribe" in Spanish, etc.). But if different countries dispute the proper name for a body of water, our policy is to display both names, with each label placed closer to the country or countries that use it."
Which basically means "multiple names until all bordering countries agree on the same name", if I'm not mistaken
In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US by English-speaking Americans is "Gulf of Mexico", but they decided to adhere to an artificial name change declared by a political figure, whose authority to make that "official" only extends to a single branch of a single level of government.
Yes, and Google has huge contracts with the government, meaning they must adhere to their rules if they want to keep those contracts.
He has no authority to name international bodies of water - i.e the large part in the centre where Google should be writing "Gulf of Mexico" because that's its name.
But he does have the ability to cause trouble for the giant corporations based in his country that serve map images to most of the rest of the world. The giant corporations also see that he grants favours for fealty. So it's actually the unofficial power he has that's the problem, rather than what's within his legal remit.
The common usage name, of course, is "Gulf of Fragile Masculinity".
But I really like this policy. Even though it still relies on Google's definition of "common usage", it makes naming much less arbitrary and more sensical.
I was wrong in my previous analysis. Google had a clear, sensible, defined, published policy, and they broke it to appease a wannabe autocrat.
Yeah, right, until a wannabe despot comes in and demands Google come lick its boots. In which case Google immediately complies with zero objection.
> How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth
But the HN link is
> Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth
Is this one of those cases where HN automatically changes the submission name? Because removing the `how` really changes the meaning here.
I don't like these magical (unexpected) solutions.
This going all the way back to John Perry Barlow and a utopia in cyberspace to escape the right wing world of Reagan and Thatcher. But it reached its zenith around the "Arab Spring" with the idea that through connecting people the tech companies were giving voice to the voiceless and creating a new world of participatory democracy.
Many of us developed an interest in technology substantially because of the promise they were selling
Yet then, the moment they received the tiniest bit of pushback they all threw in fully and enthusiastically with Trump and are now even facilitating the Right Wing Internationale as we see with the Zuck trying to silence Lula supporters in Brazil.
It's basically the mother of all rug pulls and yeah, people are a little sore
But all the stuff that happened from 2012 to 2024 had disenfranchised a lot of the actual engineers that do the real work with the progressive movement. There were a lot of early warnings, but they were ignored and instead silenced via social pressure.
Now the progressives are shocked that they couldn't just ratchet their causes ever further without losing support. And it is crazy who the techno-libertarian side joined forces with, but it was also obvious this was bound to happen at some point. You can't just continually ignore the grievances of your allies and then be shocked when they turn against you.
John Perry Barlow-esque techno libertarianism is dead.
Modern network state authoritarianism is unrecognizable from the perspective of old-style technolibertarians.
If you had told those people the modern silicon valley was working to build a Panopticon and sell it to the TLAs they would not have believed you!
Also: Why is this comment downvoted?
And you’re getting downvoted because, as per the above, it’s an irrelevant question.
But I’ll indulge you just a bit more. The principle here is not “renaming things is bad!” The principle is that indulging an authoritarian who’s trying to unilaterally rename territory his country doesn’t own is bad, particularly when he’s doing so in a fit of pique (Lake Ontario).
As you may or may not be aware (I wasn’t), the Alaskan state legislature passed a bill in 1975 requesting that the mountain be renamed. Trump didn’t even try to get Congress to pass any bills before renaming things.
Hope this all helps clarify and gives you some reason to rethink the MAGA propaganda that tries to equate Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.
It seems a clearer case of following a similar policy (though for land, not water), since Denali was already the primary, common, and local name for the mountain in Alaska, just not across the US as a whole [2]. I am not aware of the Gulf of America or Lake America as common names; the Gulf of America was occasionally a joke, though.
It's also not clear to me that it's fair to say "the Democrats renamed some mountain," since it was partly a clear response to an Alaskan request, made by both the Republican and Democratic Senators of Alaska [3], although the officials who made the final decision were all Democrats.
[0] https://searchengineland.com/mount-mckinley-denali-google-bi... [1] https://www.doi.gov/node/17570 [2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-113srpt93/html/CRPT... [3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/155
Then you look at the current day with the "Gulf of America" which fails to be primary, common, or local, and just get disappointed.
There exists no mechanism in the US for the president to force a private company to change the name of anything.
They did this to curry favor with the regime. It is naked sycophancy that shows exactly where the leadership of this company stands.
I'm sure that's not how it would go.
I've heard it called Michael Jackson Syndrome.
The how is operative, I think, since it changes the title from being about the process of how Google determines a name when it's there, to being about Google acting as some kind of rogue despot that goes around naming bodies of water.
I guess they've changed their minds since 2008... Their display of "Gulf of America" without "Gulf of Mexico" and "Lake America" without "Lake Ontario" is at odds with their declared policy.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/22/trump-atlant...
> Donald Trump said Google rejected his request to rename the Atlantic Ocean after himself or America. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, the president said he had called Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, to ask whether the company could “handle” his proposal.
>According to Trump, Pichai rejected the latest proposal. Trump described the Google CEO’s response by saying, “No, no, no. This time I’m not doing it … Oceans are different, sir. They cover … a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.”
This article is not as pure as it might seem but I think this is also a post-hoc reasoning to explain what decision they went with for the "Persian Gulf" / "Arabian Gulf" decision, and Google then proceeded to change their stance on that in the following years:
"Google had previously put both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on its Google Maps. After May 2012, it removed both names from the body of water stating that it does not name every place in the world and that it did not want to take a political stance. Iranians complained about the change and started a Twitter campaign asking "Where's the Persian Gulf?".[66] Since 2016, Google Maps has displayed both Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf on the body of water and shows "either Arabian or Persian Gulf to local users, depending on geolocation and language settings."[67] Google Earth shows both names, unless viewed through a server from a Gulf Coast Arab country, in which case it labels it simply "Arabian Gulf"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute#:~...
Evidently Google in bending the knee with the America naming but I think they also haven't exactly taken a purely principled stance in the past either
Lots of related/relevant discussion 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947