"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.
This is an interesting question to ask of any company. Every company over a long period is a Ship of Theseus. Google started out as a rowboat and now it is an ocean liner.
Investment in product quality, "Don't be evil", everything that set a company apart and allowed it to rise, it lasts only as long as it is preserved in a way that resists decay.
Is there anything left of the rowboat? I'm at the point where I am actively trying to shut Google out of my life to the degree that it is possible. And yet it is still not Microsoft. I catch a glimmer of the old google in a product release now and then.
Lake America, Gulf of America, and Mt. McKinley. The last being arguably the only sensible one based off "common names".
Literally no person not suffering a mental health crisis seriously calls these bodies of water GoA or LA. You could not find a single healthy adult on the Great Lakes who says anything other than Lake Ontario.
Absurd from Google and frankly they need to be punished. I want corporations to be scared of wading into politics again.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The great state of Indiana once declared that pi was equal to exactly 3.2. [0]
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.
> "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...
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.
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
> 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.
Clearly that policy has changed since 2008. Not surprising, since that's before they decided to officially be evil.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
For corporations in a country to be subject to and follow the rules promulgated by the elected authorities of that country is normal and just. To 'capitulate' or 'not resist' the President of the United States is fine. I cannot be bothered by this. In this case, it seems a natural extension of the non-English policy to a world where the Anglophone nations are in conflict on naming:
> For language clients other than English, we display only the preferred name in the relevant language. For example, the Japanese client of Google Earth shows "Sea of Japan" in Japanese (日本海), while the Korean version shows "East Sea" in Korean (동해).
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.
That seems to be the pattern, US visitors get only the stupid new name while visitors outside the US get the Old Name (New/US Name). It's consistent across Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.
It’s not really a matter of being surprised, is it? It’s a matter of whether they should be mercenary in the first place. Claiming that some behavior was expected is just another way to shut down criticism through cynicism.
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.
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.
Not really sure what the point is in posting some ancient policy from 2008, almost two decades ago?
Policies change and evolve. What would be more notable would be if they didn't.
And in this case, I'm not surprised at all. Trying to be the arbiter of what is considered common place names feels like a thankless and ultimately impossible task. If I were Google, I would quickly give up on that as well and simply follow official sources.
Don't like it? Then vote for the other guy next election. That's what living in a democracy is about. If anything, sticking to government names gives people even more reason to vote for the other party next election. The more people who get exposed to these dumb name changes on Google Maps, the better.
> 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.”
> 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.
Is anyone actually able to verify this behavior? All I'm seeing is the Trumpy names no matter where I look.
@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.
For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech, I'm continually surprised at how clunky and "dumb" the various post title filters here are.
> For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech
That's not really what we are :) It's part of what we talk about, sure, but mostly we're a site for curious conversation.
We actually don't want to automate things in ways that seem “polished” and “perfect” all the time. Which individual or software system would we want to be the arbiter of that? We like that the software does a rough approximation in cases like these, then through collaboration between the community and the moderators we arrive the best outcome in the end.
The Spanish proverb “en casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo” (literally: "in the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife") means that the things you would most expect someone to have or fix are often missing or neglected in their own home or life
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.
This article on the Google blog is about naming disputes between countries, not name changes driven by changing political winds within the same country. Of course, you know that and you're just trolling, which also explains why the comment is downvoted. You're welcome.
I have the same question. What did happen? Did Google just change it or did they display both like the 2008 policy?
This seems like a question that should be able to factually answer with something like, "they changed it and did not include both names" or "they changed it but included both names". I don't see how it's a troll to wonder about that.
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.
Not GP, but thank you those are interesting points.
However I think you're assuming/reading into the question a whole lot more than is there. Unfortunately your otherwise good answer comes across very hostile because you are assuming (rightly or wrongly) that the asker is parroting MAGA propaganda. I can assure you I am very much not MAGA, yet I thought it was a good question because it's interesting to see if/when Google stopped their 2008 policy and why. Your "why" makes sense to me, but you almost lost me with stuff like, "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" which feels completely unwarranted.
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.
> 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.
They told China and Russia to take a hike, but their business in the US is so large that they gave in. Apple had so much business in China that it removed the TW flag emoji in a way that caused the font renderer to crash. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-china-censorship-bug-iphon...
Idk what timeline you're looking at, but if they knew it was changing anyway, might as well.
Also, the President in many ways has a lot of control over all three branches of government. Do they really want to risk contracts because USGS hasn't technically been updated yet?
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 just saying the American president asked something doesn't necessarily mean you have to do that. If a citzen runs a map software, he is free to name that waterbody The Gulf of Orange Pedo if he wishes to, etc.
>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.
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.
"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.
Same name, but the company is quite different. What of that old Google is left now?
This is an interesting question to ask of any company. Every company over a long period is a Ship of Theseus. Google started out as a rowboat and now it is an ocean liner.
Investment in product quality, "Don't be evil", everything that set a company apart and allowed it to rise, it lasts only as long as it is preserved in a way that resists decay.
Is there anything left of the rowboat? I'm at the point where I am actively trying to shut Google out of my life to the degree that it is possible. And yet it is still not Microsoft. I catch a glimmer of the old google in a product release now and then.
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The last two words of their old motto "don't be evil"
only the 2 founders, which seems have become quite out of touch lately
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I'm still calling the axing of Google Reader the jump the shark moment!
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Lake America, Gulf of America, and Mt. McKinley. The last being arguably the only sensible one based off "common names".
Literally no person not suffering a mental health crisis seriously calls these bodies of water GoA or LA. You could not find a single healthy adult on the Great Lakes who says anything other than Lake Ontario.
Absurd from Google and frankly they need to be punished. I want corporations to be scared of wading into politics again.
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.
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Google Maps has had a different policy from this for a long time
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?
> Although there is also no definition of "common usage".. am I missing something
Common usage is defined in the article as the widespread name used by the local people to refer to it.
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As well as Lake Ontario.
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.
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.
The great state of Indiana once declared that pi was equal to exactly 3.2. [0]
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.
[0] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/mathtext/node18.h...
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Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?
As a user I want the map names I know, not whatever BS some egomaniac politician announced yesterday.
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> "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...
Exactly, that's why en-us is different than en-gb, en-ca, or even en-jp.
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.
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[flagged]
Gulf of Obsequious Toadying
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Disclaimer: work for Google
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
The key quote:
> 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.
Clearly that policy has changed since 2008. Not surprising, since that's before they decided to officially be evil.
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.
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What has changed? On my Google Maps it shows as: Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).
I'm located south of the equator.
It only shows Gulf of America if you’re in the US. It should, according to this policy, show both no matter where you are.
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"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.
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.
Do you mean Trump or Musk?
Happens all the time.
I've heard it called Michael Jackson Syndrome.
He’s stolen billions of dollars and is too senile to protect it. Everyone’s angling for a piece of the grift.
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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.
For corporations in a country to be subject to and follow the rules promulgated by the elected authorities of that country is normal and just. To 'capitulate' or 'not resist' the President of the United States is fine. I cannot be bothered by this. In this case, it seems a natural extension of the non-English policy to a world where the Anglophone nations are in conflict on naming:
> For language clients other than English, we display only the preferred name in the relevant language. For example, the Japanese client of Google Earth shows "Sea of Japan" in Japanese (日本海), while the Korean version shows "East Sea" in Korean (동해).
I was literally swimming in Lake Ontario when I learned it was now Lake America. Nice capitulation, Google.
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.
Looking at my Google Maps right now I see:
Lake Ontario (Lake America)
does it mean that the complete name change has been introduced only locally, in US?
I still see only "Lake Ontario" on my end (from Canada).
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That seems to be the pattern, US visitors get only the stupid new name while visitors outside the US get the Old Name (New/US Name). It's consistent across Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.
Current statement: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/gni...
The craziest thing here is that they used to allow comments on the corporate blog.
Are we surprised that technology companies are extremely mercenary? Why?
It’s not really a matter of being surprised, is it? It’s a matter of whether they should be mercenary in the first place. Claiming that some behavior was expected is just another way to shut down criticism through cynicism.
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.
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The title of the post is actually:
> 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.
Yes, leading How in title is always removed and often leads to worse titles.
I don't like these magical (unexpected) solutions.
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.
I would guess that author just shortened the title which was too long for hn?
No, HN has a braindead feature that autostrips certain words from titles.
Not really sure what the point is in posting some ancient policy from 2008, almost two decades ago?
Policies change and evolve. What would be more notable would be if they didn't.
And in this case, I'm not surprised at all. Trying to be the arbiter of what is considered common place names feels like a thankless and ultimately impossible task. If I were Google, I would quickly give up on that as well and simply follow official sources.
Don't like it? Then vote for the other guy next election. That's what living in a democracy is about. If anything, sticking to government names gives people even more reason to vote for the other party next election. The more people who get exposed to these dumb name changes on Google Maps, the better.
Luckily, there are maps services that actually do keep the common local names: https://mapy.com/
Well, that aged well!
I miss when we didn't have a deranged pedophile dementia patient in the white house...
...narrows it down by not much.
Why the submission today OP?
Lots of related/relevant discussion 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49495947
American Ocean incoming?
I'm waiting for west america (asia and oceania) and east america (europe and africa). And maybe "very south america" for antarctica
https://xkcd.com/2256/
I think you might have missed the latest onion: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/22/trump-atlant...
Canada > America North
He's literally "joked" about it
Presumably related:
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.”
> 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.
Is anyone actually able to verify this behavior? All I'm seeing is the Trumpy names no matter where I look.
How times have changed sigh
@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.
Fixed, thanks!
For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech, I'm continually surprised at how clunky and "dumb" the various post title filters here are.
> For a website focused on the latest and most sophisticated tech
That's not really what we are :) It's part of what we talk about, sure, but mostly we're a site for curious conversation.
We actually don't want to automate things in ways that seem “polished” and “perfect” all the time. Which individual or software system would we want to be the arbiter of that? We like that the software does a rough approximation in cases like these, then through collaboration between the community and the moderators we arrive the best outcome in the end.
I have a law of nature for this:
The Spanish proverb “en casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo” (literally: "in the blacksmith's house, a wooden knife") means that the things you would most expect someone to have or fix are often missing or neglected in their own home or life
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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.
[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
Apples and Oranges. Denali is and was a name used for thousands of years. Nobody suggested naming the mountain Mt Czolgosz.
So with this argument, all other English mountain names in the US should also be restored to their original names?
Alaskans used Denali for generations, before and after it was arbitrarily named McKinley.
This article on the Google blog is about naming disputes between countries, not name changes driven by changing political winds within the same country. Of course, you know that and you're just trolling, which also explains why the comment is downvoted. You're welcome.
I have the same question. What did happen? Did Google just change it or did they display both like the 2008 policy?
This seems like a question that should be able to factually answer with something like, "they changed it and did not include both names" or "they changed it but included both names". I don't see how it's a troll to wonder about that.
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It's a related question which clearly has some relevance here, even though the case is not completely analogous.
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.
Not GP, but thank you those are interesting points.
However I think you're assuming/reading into the question a whole lot more than is there. Unfortunately your otherwise good answer comes across very hostile because you are assuming (rightly or wrongly) that the asker is parroting MAGA propaganda. I can assure you I am very much not MAGA, yet I thought it was a good question because it's interesting to see if/when Google stopped their 2008 policy and why. Your "why" makes sense to me, but you almost lost me with stuff like, "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" which feels completely unwarranted.
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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.
Most uses in other countries should see "Gulf of Fragile Masculinity" somewhere.
Incorrect. They are explicit that they use the 'common' name, specifically to avoid arbitrary changes by (despotic) rulers.
"everyone else sees both labels"
Just because the US has decided to smear faeces on their walls doesn't mean we all need to admire it.
It sounds fucking stupid for this irrelevant name to be shown to non-American countries.
> 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.
They told China and Russia to take a hike, but their business in the US is so large that they gave in. Apple had so much business in China that it removed the TW flag emoji in a way that caused the font renderer to crash. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-china-censorship-bug-iphon...
Following local laws is not so bad. What's bad is when they politically support these despots after previously stating ideological opposition to similar despots in other countries. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/sergey-brin-g...
get over it already its gulf and lake of america
No more than Nebraska is now "Dipshit Central", see how that works?
Google is an American company. America's President asked the name be changed. Kinda stupid to accuse them of anything untoward.
I don't think anyone is saying it's untoward, just sycophantic to keep entertaining the tantrums.
Just following orders, eh?
Yes, this is exactly like the Holocaust
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Google lied and claimed the change came from the USGS when the USGS metadata hadn't changed.
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.
It's in USGS now: https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/directed-president-...
Idk what timeline you're looking at, but if they knew it was changing anyway, might as well.
Also, the President in many ways has a lot of control over all three branches of government. Do they really want to risk contracts because USGS hasn't technically been updated yet?
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 just saying the American president asked something doesn't necessarily mean you have to do that. If a citzen runs a map software, he is free to name that waterbody The Gulf of Orange Pedo if he wishes to, etc.
>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.
I'm sure that's not how it would go.
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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.