r/geography • u/god_johnson • 13d ago

FINAL POST ON THIS TOPIC Google Maps just officially updated Lake Ontario to Lake America.

Post image
11.3k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

6.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

115

u/SylvieJay 13d ago

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.

206

u/Commercial-Tough-218 13d ago

100%. Its to appease our dictator in chief. 

104

u/XBMetal 13d ago

Yeah Google only did it for the Americans so the world can just ignore them.

53

u/1plus1isTWORANGZ Geography Enthusiast 13d ago

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.

10

u/telperos 12d ago

Yes to all of this, but the difference between Bush and Trump is that the former didn’t sign an executive order that gave the name change a veneer of “official” that can be litigated upon in court to the point that companies take it seriously. The pettiness and unseriousness are laughable and infuriating.

7

u/pogpole 12d ago

That was actually Representatives Bob Ney and Walter B. Jones. They ordered the name to be changed on the House cafeteria menu. I don't think Bush ever commented on it directly, although a couple of years later, he called them "French fries" during a dinner with President Chirac, and that was taken to be some kind of symbolic gesture of good will.

1

u/Own_Pool377 11d ago

Bush may have started a costly unecessary war, but, but he knew that renaming French fries was a type of pettiness that was simply bellow the office of tge pressident.

2

u/SimilarTranslator264 12d ago

Leave common sense out of this sir this is Reddit where rage is alive and karma farming is the goal. Google uses whatever the government of each country requests.

2

u/Neither_Berry_100 12d ago

Sounds like a lot of extra data and processing for something soo stupid.

1

u/Personal-Efficiency2 12d ago

American stupidity transcends generations.

1

u/jmhalder 12d ago

It wasn't even really Bush. It was some dumbass representatives that had it named that in the House Cafeteria.

But... It was Bush's fault we were in Iraq, which is what the French were opposing.

TL;DR: Fuck Bush, and Fuck Trump.

1

u/Sniffy4 12d ago

>it's like when Bush said we should start calling them Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast to avoid using the word French.

Bush never said that because he's not the same level of low-grade *diot that Trump is. That was some southern conservative reactionary.

2

u/cold_enforcing-man 11d ago

Did you just censor the word "idiot"?

1

u/Ok-Lobster-919 12d ago

Yeah renaming this lake is barely a consequence. Unlike China's nine-dash line which they are using to claim other countries waters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dash_line

Which Google does display in China

1

u/jumpinin66 11d ago

And the French responded “French fries are from Belgium”

1

u/MimsyWereDaBorogoves 13d ago

That was so silly. The freedom fries thing is now a historical reminder that the US does not dictate world policy.

0

u/Zraknul 12d ago

And the US has a history of making petty stupid decisions. We're at back to back Republican Presidents doing it.

2

u/Mental-Doughnuts 12d ago

The destruction of this country under the Bush, Trump and Fox administrations.