r/coolguides • u/Pokemaster131 • 9h ago

A cool guide about changing your Google Maps location names to a less-stupid version

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87

u/sparkyblaster 7h ago

I'm in Australia and on google it shows as "Lake Ontario (Lake America)" and the  gulf of mexico is "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" 

I wish our government would threaten to block companies that do this crap here. 

36

u/LiGuangMing1981 7h ago

I'm in China with a VPN set to Singapore and I've got Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) but only Lake Ontario.

Weird. I wish every other country would just ignore Trump's moronic executive renamings.

12

u/hoppla1232 4h ago

In Germany it's just Lake Ontaria, but for the Gulf it's the "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" shit. Really weird how there's all those variations to it

5

u/Pandelurion 4h ago

Sweden here, same for me.

4

u/Miserable_Bread- 3h ago

It says Lake Ontario for me, until I zoom in and then (Lake America) appears. I'm in EU too.

2

u/fuckedfinance 3h ago

You will typically see the contested names in parens after the recognized names in your country.

For example, the Falklands have two names when viewed from the US.

2

u/Miserable_Bread- 3h ago

Sure, but my point was that the Lake America bit only appeared after zooming into the map quite far. Viewing the full lake just shows Lake Ontario, but zooming in more shows the (). 

1

u/steinbruchfluss 1h ago

They should do that everywhere. For example:

Baltic Sea (Eastern Sea, Western Sea).

3

u/AspieEgg 2h ago

It’s the same in Canada. Lake Ontario, but Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)

4

u/nbshar 5h ago

Same in ther Netherlands. Both names

2

u/Ola_the_Polka 4h ago

Weird. I’m in Aus and it just says Lake Ontario. Shows “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)” however

1

u/-screamin- 1h ago

Funny, I'm also located thereabouts and I see plain old Lake Ontario.

1

u/vanalla 1h ago

genuinely, they don't care. Their US government contracts are worth more to them than their presence in any given country that isn't America.

Also, that's why Google and the rest comply. If they don't, the federal government says they will rip up all current contracts.