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Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps.
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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It shows up as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" outside of the US apparently. That seems like enough to make a fuss to me; bodies of international water have specific rules around name changes and the US can't unilaterally decide differently.
americans can call it whatever the fuck they want, that wont suddenly change its local or english name in any other countries
Imagine being a tourist in the US, looking for an address you believe to be say, Martin Luther King Street. Can't find it anywhere, even on Google maps, then eventually you talk to someone and find out it's now called Elon Musk Avenue.
Not saying this is exactly the same, but if we're letting people change the names of places on commonly used global map software willy nilly, even if it's just region to region, we're gonna end up with problems. It's not like "freedom fries" back in the day that legitimately affected no one.
And I am suddenly seeing a parenthetical on the Gulf here outside the US, so there technically was a sudden change
The issue is the US does not own the gulf whereas they own the streets.
True. Guess it's more like them getting Google to change Greenland into West Alaska
East? It's east of Alaska...
I'd like to say I did that on purpose to show how dumb they'd be renaming it, but it is I who can't remember my East and West
Was going to say, it's West if you go far enough
Semisopochnoi Island in Alaska with gps coordinates 51°57′42″N 179°46′23″E – easternmost point in all U.S. territory by longitude. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-easternmost-point-in-north-america-is-actually-west-of-alaska.html
What are the rules? And who makes them?
This is accurate. Here's a screenshot from my friend in France.
I'm a mexican in mexico, my phone's in japanese and it still shows as gulf of mexico
Ha. I speak Spanish and Japanese. My girlfriend lives in Jilatopec. Sheinbaum está furiosa con Trump y me encanta.
Ok, that's absurd. I thought it makes sense to change the name for people in the US if that's the official name in the US (according to the USGS data, which has always been the official source for this info). But translating the US name into other languages that already have a name for it makes no sense.
Google is evil.
They did change that line from "do no evil" to "do any profitable amount of evil", so this is fair play.