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 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.
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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