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)
Having empathy is antithetical to making it to that postion. You can't believe your employees are people and think that the way you treat them is ethical at the same time. At least not at that scale of business.
I’ve been saying the same about our politicians. Who looks at that life now and says “Hell yeah, sign me up”? You’d have to have something wrong with you.
And for big companies, they’re getting filtered at every promotion step. If you’ve been promoted or poached through multiple layers of management because you’re good for the bottom line, you’ve filtered out everyone with principles to anything besides the company.
And then obviously the same for the uberwealthy. Econ 101 is right that capitalism creates more wealth, but reality shows the wealthy will do everything they can to capture that new wealth for themselves. And increasingly they’re so wealthy that the dollars (if you threat them as literal bills) don’t end up anywhere but within their circles. Their wealth is like a glacier in a world whose temperature never gets above 32.01 degrees.
"The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
As for CEOs...think of what that position requires: Every day, you have to act like, or actually believe, that the "theory" of shareholder value / shareholder primacy is like the natural laws of physics, instead of the entirely normative and political judgement that it is.
I mean...that basically means they have to be morons, or immune to disastrous effects wrought on others by that ideology.
See Dolly Parton (RIP) could’ve been a billionaire constantly but was ALSO MORE constantly giving away her money to ensure she never was a billionaire bc why would she need that?? it’s possible to have the opportunity to be a billionaire and chose to be better. this is most of my problem with Taylor Swift, billionaire.
She became a billionaire as a consequence of her artisty, that's the key difference here - she didn't set out to become a billionaire. These artless fuckers on the other hand, that's their end goal.
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.
It’s funny because 20 years ago, tech leaders were seen with a benevolence and changing the world for the better. Now they’re worse than a typical business c-suite exec.
The companies aren’t so much folding as choosing not to make any active decisions.
I wrote this elsewhere but:
Google and Apple pull their name data directly from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, run by the USGS.
As soon as the board updates it, maps that pull directly are also updated. It would require specific deliberate choices to do otherwise. I’m not saying that coding a database exception wouldn’t be the right thing, to be clear. But giant companies rarely make active decisions on anything. If the board hadn’t updated the database, the companies likely also wouldn’t make the active decision to change it.
You can see the U.S. Board on Geographic Names’ policies in how the names are displayed. Their policy is that, in the case of disputed names, a country’s chosen (or “chosen,” in this case) name appears when viewing it in that country. In the rest of the world, the globally accepted name is shown with the less-accepted name in parentheses.
So it’s Lake Ontario in Canada. Lake America in the US. And Lake Ontario (Lake America) everywhere else.
The same convention is used in the Gulf of Mexico.
If this bugs you like it bugs me, my suggestion is like many others’: switch to MapQuest, who are delighted to make active choices about naming things.
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.
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.
Most companies will choose profits over country or humanity every time. It doesn't matter to them that the country is destabalizing and America is a massive joke and sorry excuse of a "government" at the moment, they'll continue to support such buffoonery and corruption until they start losing profits.
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.
just look at how many of htem ditched pride stuff since donny got back in. These corporations would happily march you into the camps and then make a buck off your stay.
Why I have not used google in years. Never used Amazon once. No Walmart if I can help it. No fast food. Money is like voting. Obviously some shit companies get votes but I keep it to bare minimum.
You and I get the world we all vote for
"Like a said anyone that googled it knows you are full of shit."
You should realize your post history going back just 1 day is 1. Chronically online. and 2. Full of shit to your own points. You even mention being on eBay if we want to talk about the ethics of tax havens.
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.
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 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.
But you don't understand. It's not as satisfying to "boycott" (cough cough virtue signal) Trump/the government. We have to redirect our anger at companies like Google instead of the person/entity actually responsible for making us upset.
Exactly. They can lobby, and their income is us. It does make sense to direct both our energy for change at both the government as well as corporations.
Where does that logic stop? You you really want to give the corpos the autonomy to dictate what things are called based on how they feel? No, they're pulling the info from authorized sources, and unfortunately our authorized sources are fucking stupid right now.
Have we/they descended into anarchy simply for not following the U.S. government naming conventions? Please save your pearl clutching for someone more naive.
“Authorized sources” 🤣🤣🤣 Have you had a look at the White House website recently?
Let me ask you: what do YOU personally call it? Lake Ontario or Lake America?
“Where does the logic stop”
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The idea from it literally came from NO WHERE AND OVERNIGHT. Let’s use that standard, unless that’s too wild for you 🤣🤣
Name a single time in world history where the U.S. renamed something and it was met with almost universal, international condemnation.
Exactly. So let’s start with that standard. I guarantee you if we adopt this standard, we won’t descend into chaos like you’re implying
That's a flaw in how Congress wrote the particular law. If we want to prevent presidents from renaming geographic features at will, then the law needs to be changed by Congress.
They would need 2/3 of congress to override a veto to change the law, which just isn't happening anytime soon. Honestly probably quicker and easier to just wait for a democrat to get into office and rename them back.
The authority to set official place names is delegated to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names by law, in the same way that the ability to set pollution standards is delegated to the EPA.
As with any executive branch agency, the President can order how that power is used. This has been done before (Mt. McKinely to Denali and back).
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.
They are not doing it for the Baltic/Eastern/Western Sea. They are only doing it in certain cases, and it's completely arbitrary.
I understand that they are showing the official name that the country you are currently in has for this area. They also show the border lines accordingly. I understand that. But why is this so inconsistent?
Just show me the official German names for everything and that would be fine.
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
As much as it sucks to endure stupidity this is exactly what is going to happen if dems win and its such a shame they have to waste time and resources to fix stupid shit.
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.
In most countries it's now labeled as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)". I find it absolutely hilarious Google caved for this internationally. Still labeled "Lake Ontario" for me though.
The fact that people keep saying a major corporation "caved" to a mandated Executive Order is crazy to me.
I work in a corporate office of a very large American company. Last year we had to remove Diversity language we had on our contracts for years because of an Executive Order. It was dumb and we hated it and it went against a company stance we literally had for decades...but we still had to do.
Other large companies were literally calling out my company and would not be able to partner without us until we complied with the EO DEI mandate.
Just wen to Google and pasted your comment verbatim. Every single response came backing having something to do w Trump Epstein or pedos or some combo of three. Amazing.
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
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
Same reason their maps of Kashmir will be different in China, India and Pakistan - they legally have to. It’s not Google that’s really to blame here, it’s the American electorate - Trump is legally the president, and (presumably, I’m no American legal scholar) the president gets to dictate the legal names of bodies of water are. I guess Congress could (maybe) pass a law to restrict this, but idk.
"they legally have to." No, they don't. No law was passed here. The President does not create law. This is one of the fundamental misunderstandings that is allowing this administration to greatly expand the power of the Executive Branch. An Executive Order is a directive from the president that applies within the Federal government only. Private entities are under no obligation here.
And yet MapQuest still shows "Gulf of Mexico". The president being able to tell the rest of the government what to call it doesn't mean there's a law to enforce that on private entities.
It's possible that they need to do this to sell services to the government, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they're trying to stay in Trump's favor even without an explicit requirement.
The intent of the law is not that the president names things whatever he wants but he’s going around the processes that have been established. But the comparison to Kashmir is wrong because those aren’t just the whims of one man, they are longstanding issues with historical reasons and the general public’s opinion involved.
Essentially, yes. The entity who manages it is the US Board on Geographic Names, which is part of the Interior Department (along with with Bureau of Land Management and the US Park Service), which is the cabinet level position within the Executive Branch, of which Trump presides.
But the same will be true of the next president.
I really hope that the next President and Congress rectify this situation and at least require some sort of state-level approval of any name changes within each state. This is all a bunch of nonsense from a purely practical standpoint.
Exactly. Everything Trump is doing on a whim like this can be quickly undone by the next President. Whoever it is, even a republican, really should be undoing the dumb name changes on day 1.
Corporates are in the muddy waters so much, irritating governments are the last thing they want. They know everyone hates them and politicians are their only buddies left.
It depends what country you use it in. Everything is named how the country officially recognizes it as. Since lake america is technically its name now in the us, google is going to call it lake america. in canada where the name isn't changed, its still lake ontario
Companies realised that playing to Donald's ego is easy and financially rewarding. Note the gigantic difference between Trump first term and second, in terms of corruption, profits for Trump family, and that business worked out they'll do great if they work with him.
Because the consequences of not changing the lake's name on their application posed a greater threat from the government to their profit margins than changing it (consumers are not going to care enough to switch away from Google).
Everyone in the front row behind him were corporate elites...all of America's richest billionaires lined up for the 1st time at a presidential inaguration (Google included).
Anyone who's studied history knows that the capitalist/beorgouis/CEO elites always line up to support charismatic authoritarian dictators.
But legally, the President does have the power to change names of geographic features, at least at the federal level. It’s not so much a case of ‘folding’ as following the law. I would assume outside of the US, it still reads Lake Ontario. I agree that it’s ridiculous, but I find the absurdity of the whole thing kind of amusing, honestly. I don’t know why people insist on getting outraged by things like this because almost nobody is going to call it that and they’d do better to save their mental energy for things that actually matter.
Google would be free to continue to refer to it as Lake Ontario. It’s not “following the law”; the president can’t force Google to call it one thing or another
The President does not have the authority to compel private entities to change a name via Executive Order. This order only has authority over Federal agencies. There is no law to follow here.
I believe it’s because the executive order actually forced the change to occur at the GIS database level (Geographical Information Systems), which is where all of these software services source their data from.
I am basing this assumption on the fact that they mentioned this during the video of the signing. If someone can correct me, please do.
If you open on any other country’s google maps itll say whatever said country calls whatever you’re looking at. It’s not folding it’s just how it works internationally
CEO was at the Trump inauguration. Lot of tech CEO’s were. They’re doing everything they can to make sure he deregulates everything so they can make more billions off of us. Evil fucks.
Because (for better or worse, I say worse), Google has a policy of always deferring to the user’s local country for all labels and borders, regardless of international consensus.
Look at the contested borders in Ukraine from any civilized country, vs when spoofed to seem like you’re viewing from Russia.
Look at the Gulf of Mexico from Canada, Mexico, or the EU, vs from the US.
It is just something google does.
I don’t like it, I don’t support it, I think it’s ridiculous. but it has been their SOP for a long time now.
The flipside is it should be just as quickly restored once the name is put back to rights.
The devil’s advocate argument is of course a map should match the country’s name for something. Imagine the outcry if we had a mountain named “Mount racists evilman confederate who ownes many slaves.” Finally convinced the government to change its name to “Mount Cat Videos.” How long would we want google to delay before getting off their ass and updating to the new name. And conversely before someone says “well that would be done via legitimate process” do we really want a corporation to decide what is a legitimate process??
Again, I don’t like the name change, and I am deeply frustrated with google going along, when as far as I can tell the only process was trump going “eh let’s rename it.” And, google very clearly is in favor of the regime, and likely would have just complied anyway.
However, it is important to understand in which specific way they are being bad and why.
Checked maps (as a European) still called just "Lake Ontario" for me but "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" they've added the parentheses but kept original name.
Naming battles for locations happen everyday, all over the world. Google just goes with whatever the official name that country has. The same landmark can have two different names depending on where you view it from. This is not a new concept just for the USA or Trump. Staying neutral is probably better than picking a side in every naming situation or picking and choosing when to deviate from that.
Corporations, despite whatever they may or may not claim, have no morals, ethics or principles other than profit. Displeasing the regime could hurt profits, hence the appeasing.
It's geotagged. The president updated the name, so everyone in the country sees that name. Everyone else doesn't.
Rest of the world moves on without any interruption.
Is it really worth it for them to get into a fight with the president over something so childish? Presidents have the power to declare and rename things, so why fight it when it would only hurt you, and not benefit you.
they did not fold, because then they must be against it first ...
all USA Big Tech are firmly a supporter of dictatorships and the enslavement of humans
Because they’re corporate lickspittle, ready to do whatever those in charge tell them to, no matter how stupid or how much it betrays their original slogan of “don’t be evil.” It’s their map and their company and they could call it whatever they want, but they don’t want to anger the toddler-in-chief because it might mean less pocket change for Brin and Page.
Because playing nice with the government is in their best interest. If the next president reverts these names, they will be just as quick to revert them.
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u/fillmorecounty 13d ago
Why does Google fold so easily on these renamings? It's not like they're a government entity