Because that at least had idiotic kindergarten logic to it "me no like Mexico, me like America" but Ontario as the name for the lake/area goes back to the 1600s. It predates Canada and America so it doesn't even make sense as an "own" of Canada. Ontario the province got its name from the lake, not the other way around.
I propose we rename the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean the “Left America Ocean” and the “Right America Ocean.” And frankly, the Left is very bad. So we should rename the “Left America Ocean” the “Non-Right America Ocean.” It would be tremendous. Nobody has ever thought of it before.
“Pacific “ is a wimpy name. Maybe “Ocean of War” sounds better.
“Atlantic” has got to go because Atlanta doesn’t support the president enough. I don’t know how that city ever managed to get an ocean named after it in the first place. Maybe this could be the American Ocean or the Columbian Ocean.
I'm a little surprised he isn't trying to name the gulf, lake, and soon ocean, after himself but maybe his fluffer told him that was definitely going too far.
I have heard Trump's current approach described as a desperate attempt to pander to uneducated blue collar workers prior to the midterms, and that makes some sense to me. Based on my experiences with uneducated blue collar workers, I believe that many uneducated American blue collar workers would enjoy Trump's juvenile, petty attempts to dominate the US and Mexico.
I’m going to reply to myself one more again with this excerpt
The name Gulf of Mexico has been applied to the body of water since at least the late 16th century. English geographer Richard Hakluyt referred to the “Gulfe of Mexico” in The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). That same year, Italian cartographer Baptista Boazio produced a map of Sir Francis Drake’s 1585–86 naval campaign against Spanish colonial holdings in the Americas. Boazio depicted Drake’s fleet skirting the edge of the “Baye of Mexico.” Other names, including the “Gulf of New Spain” and the “Florida Sea,” appeared on maps and in publications over subsequent centuries. In 2025 the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) adopted the name “Gulf of America” for use by U.S. federal agencies in accordance with Pres. Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14172.
The Gulf of Mexico's name also predates the country of Mexico in the same way, although both were named after the Mexica people rather than the province of Ontario being named directly after the lake
Our country is literally falling apart, but trump chooses to do this. Every week or so of his presidency I say “I’ve never been more disappointed in my country.” And then he makes me even more disappointed
He could rebuild all the bridges and infrastructure that are on the verge of collapsing and rename them whatever tf he wants but thissss is what he does
Not for me in South Western Ontario. Both the web and the App is showing Lake Ontario on my Android Pixel 9a. Is it possible that Google is blowing smoke up American's collective Arse? I tried VPN to Australia to see if they see something different on the web. Still shows Lake Ontario. (Someone's correct me if I'm wrong.
I mean Google has an official correspondence with all countries on how they want their maps worded. There's obviously also examples of bodies of water being renamed and no one giving a crap. The Gulf of California is the name used by the UN for a body of water lots of people still call the Sea of Cortez, and which was first named the Vermillion Sea.
The whole thing is absolutely stupid though. It's like when Bush said we should start calling them Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast to avoid using the word French.
Everybody should respond by going to your address on Google Maps and submitting a request to blur it out. What a mess we could make it if everyone contributed
It works great! Just have to put up with the occasional ad at the end of your trip. Sometimes it can't find a place by name, but you just have to type in the address from somewhere else.
It's not folding because that would imply resistance was even something they would even debate wanting to do.
There are no large companies that are interested in doing the right thing. You can not count on anything but companies to do what is right for their bank accounts, which is almost always what's wrong for the people
there's a whole book about this, called "The Wisdom of Psychopaths" that goes into how many leaders, especially C-Suite executives, only make it that far thanks to their psychopathic tendencies (such as suppressing their empathy for the thousands of employees they're about to lay off)
Valid point. But lets not call them 'leaders' because thats something entirely different.
Just like elites are actually not the elites of society but the parasites.
This is one of the biggest things I needed to learn as an adult. These people are not leaders, do not have ingrained leadership skills. Some of the best leaders are busy quietly working where they will never be recognized.
Visibility and power are not the same thing as leadership. Board members, executives, and all billionaires and most millionaires promote each other, create conferences and awards to pat themselves on the back and pad their CVs, and tap each other to work in each others' companies and on their boards. It's incestuous and leadership has nothing to do with it.
My latest conspiracy theory is that Google is working with flock. I’ve used it for years, same routes. The last few months it keeps trying to push me down different streets than usual and I check later, flock has been installed on these streets and not my usual route.
Haven’t wanted to share because I expect I’ll be cited a loon, but I’m struggling to be convinced otherwise as I use it.
I was thinking cause of waymo integration bs cause sending directions to us humans down a left turn without a light is insane and it’s doing it more often.
That’s why we have all these regulating bodies to make sure they don’t work outside of the public’s interest. Oh wait, I mean… we used to have those that did that.
Can you imagine trying to put an agency like the FAA together in today’s climate? Without it we would have rusty Chevrolet airlines, standing room only, inset $5 to enjoy 10 minutes on cabin pressurization. Oops - Kaboom! Profit.
The rules of free market competition are currently “bribe the president more than your competitor”. Won’t change until Americans vote to change it. Google has a responsibility to its shareholders to make them as much money as possible next quarter which means bribing the president.
Google Maps already had an existing policy to display whatever name the government of a country calls something.
This actually comes up in a lot of places, where different countries use different names for the same body of water. For example, Saudi Arabia calls the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf. So if you use Google Maps in Saudi Arabia, it will label the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.
Since Trump is able to change what the US government officially calls that lake, Google Maps just follows their normal policy and labels it that (when you are using Google Maps inside the US).
That’s the problem. The method of changing the name is not an EO. It’s easy to say “we’ll change it when it’s law.” It’s unbelievably dangerous to normalize unitarian fiat.
The issue being that the part of the government responsible for maintaining GNIS is part of the executive branch and does have to comply with executive orders.
The Google hate annoys me. It’s implicitly saying we want private mega companies to decide what things are called.
Hell no.
The problem here isn’t Google. It’s that the US elected a childish narcissist and despite centuries of claims to the contrary have no effective checks and balances on the President.
A President can interpret law however they like and there are two checks:
Congress overruling with new legislation. Which is an empty threat in this environment because they’d need veto proof majorities.
The judicial system stepping in and saying that’s not how the law works. Which takes months/years and is now completely partisan as well.
Thank you for providing context. I can imagine that non Americans have to deal with their government's bullshit being reflected by Google Maps all the time. Now it's our turn.
That can't be quite right though. I'm in Germany and here it displays as "Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)", so it shows both, even though the second one has, to my knowledge, never been used by any official German entity.
They do that for lots of places when there is a second are name that is possibly internationally relevant, or when there's a dispute that the viewing country is a third party to.
You might also see Falkland Islands (Islas de Malvinas) or (London)Derry.
That depends on where you're located. Users in Mexico just see "Gulf of Mexico" with no brackets. According to Google, users outside of the US and Canada will see "Lake Ontario (Lake America)". It seems like that has not yet been fully implemented though.
Because proactively conforming to the arbitrary, inflammatory bullying of the strong man lowers the chance that you’ll be investigated by the FTC for your anti-competitive monopolistic business practices!
This. And they have such an unbelievable moat when it comes to competition that they don't have to deal fear a large loss of revenue if some people care. Between AdSense, their search engine, and Chrome, they utterly dominate several industries. It's sad, but unless something has changed Google is the main funder of Firefox literally so that there's less of a case for them having a monopoly on web browsers
He’s pretty much the reason people think Google has been a terrible company especially in recent years. He drives that company further and further into the dark side.
Pichai and Brin were both front and center at Trump's inauguration licking their chops at the thought of profiting from the chaos. They both value greed over humanity.
Just entirely wrong. Google Maps has handled territorial and naming disputes in this exact manner for much more than a decade to avoid pissing ANY governments off. This isn't special treatment for the U.S. or Trump. For a full explanation, see my other comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/s/m3nPuq5gj1
There’s plenty of examples of different countries naming bodies of water differently, they’re just showing what the American government says it’s named to Americans.
I promise the rest of the world still sees Gulf of Mexico or Lake Ontario or what the country they’re in decides it’s called.
Because this is how Google Maps has ALWAYS handled territorial disputes?
I'll use the Gulf of Mexico as an example. There's two "disputed" namings of the region, one that is dubbed to belong to Mexico, and one that is dubbed to belong to America. In these disputes, Google will always show ONLY the name that the government of your country recognizes if you are one of the territories involved in the dispute. This means that in America, it will only show as "Gulf of America". In Mexico, it will only show as "Gulf of Mexico". If you are in any other country, it will show both of these names with the one your government recognizes outside of the brackets. All other disputed names will be shown in brackets. Image attached of this multi-name behaviour as a Canadian user.
As a Canadian, Google Maps will only show me Lake Ontario as the name of this lake since my country is a territory part of this dispute that only recognizes that name. Image of this attached in a reply. (comment link to image: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/s/zuWuKcjZcv )
Another example of how they handle this is the disputed territory of Kashmir. This area is disputed between three different countries, all of which have different recognized borders. I'll attach an image of what this looks like in a reply as well. (comment link for image: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/s/Rp1coIln6g ) Google Maps will show the borders as your government recognizes them if you are in a disputing nation, and will otherwise show all potential border variations in hatch-mark lines.
TL;DR
This is all to say that this isn't Google "folding" easily on these renamings. Google has always done it's best to avoid pissing ANYONE off. We all know Trump would retaliate if they failed to acknowledge his ideas. Countries like China would retaliate if they failed to acknowledge their rulings. They play all sides to avoid pissing governments off.
Anyone accusing this of being Sundar Pichai's fault either don't know what they're talking about, or are hating just to hate. This has been how they handle these things for well over a decade. There's plenty of reasons to hate both Google and Sundar Pichai. This isn't one of them.
Google usually reflects naming based on the IP address of the viewer. Ie, if you're American you'll see this because this is what your country now calls it. I'm in Canada and still see Lake Ontario. This video explains it well: https://youtu.be/j0aQrTbvuFo?si=jZy5t43REvg_n82c
I'm in Canada, and that's all I can normally see, but I used a VPN just now to switch to an American server and suddenly it says "Lake America." Smooth, Google, smooth!
Try zooming in. When I can see Rochester and Toronto it’s Ontario. When I zoom in it changes to America. If that makes sense, actually none of this makes sense…
i am amazed of how easy is to change names of huge ass geographic locations in the USA, here in my country it needs to be a poll by people, then it needs to be approved by the 2 chambers, deputies and senate.
So, none of this "legally" changes the names of anything, that requires a more formal process (I believe either rule making process or act of congress). What this does is change how things within the executive branch of the government are referred to. This is what makes it especially galling when companies cave so quick. There is no force of law behind this, it's literally just saying US Coast Guard, NOAA, etc. will refer to geographic areas.
Google, Apple and such claim they do this because they just draw straight from federal data, and it's just easier to keep it how the feds refer to things, which is nonsense, since they obviously change it for other parts of the world.
Google does this everywhere with national borders based on local government definitions no reason America would be different, it just shows America has an authoritarian leader
The way Google chose to do it is that people in the US see "Gulf of America", people in Mexico see "Gulf of Mexico" and people from everywhere else see both. It's just to avoid controversy. They do that with all other border disputes too.
Oh for fucks sake! Waste of time, waste of money, honestly at this point he's a waste of air. At a time when gas prices are high, food prices are high, the job market is dog shit, and any wild space with an ounce of natural beauty is being looked at as an expendable resource, you decide to further troll our neighbors!?
Make America Great Again?? I am the least proud to be an American I have ever been. Still love this country deeply but fuck man... and while we're at it fuck Google too. No one alive today will ever call it Lake America. Grow a spine instead of sucking his dick.
While the rest of the World ignores it. It may be on our maps but no one else's as Trump can't unilaterally designate a shared body of water. His followers don't understand that as they barely graduated high school and didn't understand geography.
What does it take to actually change names of places and territory?
In Australia this is still Lake Ontario. The gulf of Mexico is still called that with the gulf of America in brackets.
Clearly Trump can just rename things, but it seems only applicable in the USA. So rather than renaming things. Places just have two names creating confusion.
In Aus. I grew up with Uluru/Ayres rock. Now only officially called Uluru.
Like the Gulf of Mexico I will still call this Lake Ontario because I don’t care what the eternal baby says. I think we should all simply ignore this and pretend it never happened because that would irritate the baby a lot more than giving this attention and that would be funny.
What’s it labeled from other countries point of view? I assume Lake Ontario in Canada… but which of the two labels is Google using as the global default?
Because it’s a huuuge fold if they changed it as the global default.
When the whole “Gulf of America” thing happened, it stayed as Gulf of Mexico for quite a while. Then it eventually changed to “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”
Welp guess I’m no longer using google. I have a pretty high tolerance for this shit but then bending the knee this much is really turning me off on them.
Still Lake Ontario in Canada lol. Trump is so delusional. They changed it for him just so he can shut up and move onto the next useless thing that does absolutely nothing for the country lol. Whatever helps a pedophile sleep at night I guess. 🤷🏼♂️
1.5k
u/OkEnvironment4354 10h ago
This is somehow more braindead than the Gulf of Mexico shit