Comment by ericmay
7 hours ago
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.
It's a complicated policy. What about if you're travelling in France? If someone gives you directions do you want it to not be shown on the map because you call it one thing? What about Canada, where part of the country would want the English Channel and the other La Manche. I get why showing two names would help a lot.
Sure but you can leave some of those up to local nuances - like in Canada maybe they show both. In the US maybe they don't since we only call it the English Channel.
But I'd say that it's probably not a big deal anyway because how often are you going to run into such a scenario, and even if you do how would Google/whoever capture a lot of informal names for things? A little bit of confusion is fine too anyway.
At google scale I imagine at least millions of times per day if not more. For what it's worth, here in CA it's just "English Channel" and I like that. I'm just saying that I don't see a way to do it perfectly every time, I agree that a little bit of confusion is OK.