Comment by mapontosevenths
6 hours ago
"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.
To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
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I hear there's a janitor using the handle of one of the original paddles as a mop handle.
It's only there because it wasn't inventoried and so not lost in the purge.
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
"The United Nations is a transparently antisemitic organisation" - Google Co Founder
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/07/08/sergey-...
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Not just out of touch, but downright psychopathic in my opinion. I used to greatly admire Larry Page. He seemed like a really smart, driven, level-headed guy. When the news came out that he was basically fine with AI wiping out humanity, as it would just be the natural evolution of intelligence, and to fight against that would be "speciesist", all I good think was "what a psycho".
And I really don't think I'm exaggerating Page's opinion on this, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
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I'm still calling the axing of Google Reader the jump the shark moment!
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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.
> "In the situation with the Gulf, it's unambiguously true that the "primary, common, local" name used in the US"
And that's my point. It depends on how "primary" or "common" is defined, the article has no definition of it. Who gets to decide that, Google?
The easy (and predictable) cop-out is to follow a governments definition of what is "the expected primary and common name", and then show that name in brackets.
The only restriction this "definition" seems to set is that your country needs to be adjacent to the landmark to define its name, so "a ruler" cannot decide to rename e.g. Australia unless he is either "the ruler" of Australia or of a country adjacent to it.
And we're back to square one.
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EDIT: Yes, I also read this sentence: "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.".
The question remains how to quantify "widespread daily use".
It creates room to justify against an immediate change of a name, but doesn't define when this criteria is reached.
And from all I see, all this doesn't seem to matter anyway, because a new local naming will anyway be added in brackets (see Gulf of Mexico). What am I missing?
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> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
As well as Lake Ontario.
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...
That pi bill never became law.
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.
What do you want to see when streets get renamed to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd? Or renamed away from Caesar Chavez? How long do you wait for the "common name" to take precedence?
I don't know... I tend to agree with you (especially in this case), but I can also see cases where that's actually not what I'd expect. My hometown has a square that everyone knows as the "tribunal square" (which used to be its official name), but that's not been its official name in decades and about 30% of people don't even know the current official name, yet I would expect a map to refer to it by its current official name and not "tribunal square".
Maybe not quite the same as in this case, the entity who names the square actually owns the square, which isn't the case in the gulf of mexico naming situation. But there is some grey area I think.
>Do you think Google should serve customers or politicians?
Why not ask the question this way.
Do you think Google should serve people with money in their hand or a gun to their head?
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That's why I wrote official. If the US as a country and as an institution change the name of a place, it is neither the problem nor the role of google to decide if it is good or not. I would not be happy if my president decided to rename the united kingdom to the îles normandes (normandy isles), but I do think that once official google should change the name
> "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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Gulf of Obsequious Toadying
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