- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
The president of Mexico on Thursday expressed hope that Google “reconsiders” its decision to change its online maps to reflect U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that he has the authority to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order announcing he was changing the name of the body of water to the Gulf of America.
For U.S. users of Google Maps, the gulf was listed as the Gulf of America as of Thursday. Google, whose CEO attended Trump’s inauguration along with other tech moguls, said last month it has “a long-standing practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned Thursday that her government “will file a civil suit” against Google if it does not revert back to labeling the international body of water the Gulf of Mexico.
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Republicans are so good at baiting liberals into useless bullshit arguments, while they plunder stuff that actually matters.
Google also removed the ability to suggest edits to specifically the Gulf.
Guess they knew ahead of time they’d get an influx of requests to change or back.
I want to know how many of the people here defending Google’s decision would be okay with Google labeling Taiwan as “Taiwan (Chinese Taipei)” for people in Taiwan and also the rest of the world.
Why bother with this? If you want to make a point, pass regulation in Mexico to call E.E.U.U. (US in Mexico) be called Northern Mexico. Then Google is forced to comply on that territory like they claim they do for disputed sections when maps are viewed from that region. It would make for some funny reactions from people visiting Cancun or Puerto Vallarta.
Edit: plus it would show how stupid the whole rename thing is to begin with.
TIL…
The abbreviation E.E.U.U. (often written as EE. UU.) stands for Estados Unidos (United States) in Spanish. This abbreviation follows a grammatical rule in Spanish where doubling the initial letters of each word indicates plurality
So you taught me something today I did not know. Thank you!!
That rule existed in Portuguese as well, but they dropped that as indication of plurality is just… wasteful
Interestingly (or not) it’s also used in French but only in one case that I’m aware of. Monsieur is abbreviated to M. while messieurs (plural) is MM.
Oh, 2 M’s touch.
I always wondered why it had double letters. Thank you!
See, I learned this in Spanish class in my American high school, and I don’t think that linguistic fact stuck with me! Thanks
Just let our mexican and Canadian neighbors take over the USA. We’ve proven to be unworthy of making wise choices.
Wait what do they call the European Union then because that’s still EU in Spanish as well.
It’s UE in Spanish, from Unión Europea. (Non-doubled letters because it’s a single Union, there’s no plural like in “States”).
Sometimes people in Spain do use the English acronyms for both EU/USA, but I don’t think I’ve seen it often. Both UE and EEUU are more common from what I’ve seen, and also people rarely say these out loud, it’s exclusively a written language problem.
If we’re going to play that demagogic game, why not make “United States of America” be shown as “United States of North America” to reclaim the continent name back? Companies will comply if it’s an official request.
They are both states united and in north america…
Es el chapulín colorado
No contaban con mi astucia!
Google is one of many propaganda arms of the US govt. I highly doubt they’d comply with that as it doesn’t fit in with their political agenda.
At that point they would be like twitter in Brazil when they didn’t comply with fines and were blocked at the country level: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y06vzk3yjo
Currently in Mexico, it displays the name your phone region is set to. It still shows Gulf of America on my phone, even when I am on Mexican WiFi.
Ive been already boycotting google, amazon, facebook, reddit. Yall need to get on it
Nah. I’ll start boycotting google when there are useful alternatives. Amazon, facebook, reddit - no problem.
Google search - fine, I can get by with DDG or Yandex. Gmail - sure, whatever. Maps? Organic Maps (and other openstreetmaps front-ends) works alright for getting your bearings, but it’s a far cry from useful for finding businesses, and terrible for navigation. Waze used to be the only viable alternative, but ever since Google bought them, it’s hard to justify a full boycott without massively inconveniencing myself.
Same for meta as a whole. Facebook and Instagram, sure, no need. But living without whatsapp is simply impossible in some countries, where it’s the de-facto standard for communication, and even used as the only means of contact with government agencies.
If you disapprove of internet companies caving to authoritarian politics, I have bad news for you about Yandex
We did it with Lemmy. It CAN be done!
Yeah its true unfortunately
Fr, I try, but it’s really not possible to get away from these companies.
Nobody wants signal, nobody wants mastodon, nobody wants or frankly can use openstreetmaps. Alternatives are just not good enough
Alternatives are just not good enough
And to no fault of their own of course. They just aren’t working with the same resources as Google and the others.
I think it’s more a question of stepping down our level of comfort at this point. Can we live without a particular service that Google provides, when there are no alternatives with feature parity? Or can we live with the fact that some of the features aren’t working as well or missing, and use the alternatives anyway?
Exactly. If there were perfectly interchangeable alternatives, there would have been a true competition and those companies wouldn’t be holding the amount of power they do today in the first place.
Moving to alternatives requires some degree of effort and giving up on some microconforts. There’s no other way. There’s no fight without any pain. If we want to fight those companies, we must sacrifice those micro conforts, even if that means reducing tech use as a whole and doing a few things the “old fashioned” way.
it really sucks when you realise that virtually everything is a US company… and yet everything they sell is made in fucking China
My phone is a Pixel on Google Fi, and I have a YouTube premium account. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me :( lol
I prefer the name “golfo del gringo loco”
Everyone needs to get used to ignoring this bullshit. The Gulf of America thing isn’t important. It doesn’t effect anyone, and there’s far too many posts about it when there are real things to pay attention to. This is purely a distraction. Stop giving it attention.
There is one part thats relevant, and thats the government suing AsPo for refusing to comply. Thats a direct attack on the First Amendment
It’s the details that make up the whole picture.
As an isolated situation, the renaming thing may be stupid and not worth giving any credence. Energy can be spent resisting elsewhere in more useful places. However along with the rest of the actions of billionare corpos that kissed the ring, it’s part of the overall trend with devastating consequences. Bullshit details shouldn’t be ignored, but acknowledged as “they’re fucking us from all directions right now and waging war on reality, and we really should stop letting them”.
It’s definitely a distraction tactic, but at the very least looking at Google Maps and Bing Maps makes very clear to people which megacorps are riding the oligarchy; just in case anyone held hope their favorite “techbro revolutionary” might side with them. PS: Mapquest gets it right.
Nah it actually matters more than you think. As an American you might think this is okay, but its not. And Trump getting away with whatever he wants all the time is because of enabling
For sure. It’s just that this isn’t the part that matter. This is part of the enabling. If you’re paying attention here you don’t see the other thing over there. It’s slight of hand. You only have so much attention, and it’s better spent where it actually has an effect. This will be reversed with the next president.
Reality has to BE.
Out with the oldspeak. In with the newspeak.
Where will the lawsuit be filed in?
Mexican courts? Good luck getting an American company to comply.
US Courts, well… surely no judge would be biased right? glances at the composition of the US Supreme court
International Courts? Lol like they have any power at all.
Reminds me of The Expanse:
“Earth Court? Mars Court? What Inner court gives Belters justice?”
Mexican courts? Good luck getting an American company to comply.
Why not? Brazilian courts ordered Twitter to ban some people, Twitter refused, court treated to jail Brazilian Twitter legal representatives, Twitter closed their Brazilian office to shield itself from Brazilian courts, Brazilian courts ordered ISPs to block Twitter because they had no legal representatives on the country, after a couple of weeks without Brazilian access Twitter bow down, rehired their legal representatives and complied with Brazilian court orders.
Don’t see why Mexican courts couldn’t do the same with Google Maps.
By “comply”, I mean like getting them to revert the map rename. Kicking them out and blocking them isn’t really getting them to “comply”
By contrast, if the US government wanted Google to do something, they could storm their headquarters and get the government tech people to go in the servers and change it (Edit: after obtaining a court order to do so, obviously).
if the US government wanted Google to do something, they could storm their headquarters and get the government tech people to go in the servers and change it.
Bwahahahahahahainhalehahahahahahaa
Thanks, I needed that. Whatever movies you’re watching are terrible.
Forcing your way into Google to have “government techs” change something is NCIS level ridiculous. Conceivably they might get a court order to “force” Google to change. Funnily enough, the US and Mexico have the exact same levers to make a company do what they want. The US has more power to push those levers though.
We’ll see who’s laughing after the government breaks through all of Google’s firewalls and hacks their mainframe!
They’re gonna need a lot of cyber-tape if they want any chance of stopping all the data from spilling through their firewalls.
And who knows how google would handle a cyber-nuke.Don’t forget two people typing on one keyboard
Mexico is a big country, Google has shareholders who demand line goes up, people use maps to advertise (“map pack” “local SEO” and brand tie-ins)…
yeah, we’d start using their spineless nature for good tbh
In order to do business in Mexico, they must agree to Mexican laws.
In order to do business in Canada, they must follow Canadian laws.
In order to do business in the US, they must
follow US lawskiss the ring.This isn’t the first time big tech has had to tackle something like this. Usually it’s with disputed territory. In that case, each region gets to see what it demands to see, while presenting something different to the rest of the world.
The suit should be by an American cartography company over the proper US Board on Geographic Names’s official process not being followed for the name change.
I’m actually submitting a name change to the board through the official process. But since the USGS added a bit to the process saying that resetablishing historical names isn’t a reason for a name change, I’m going to recommend it be changed to “The Gulf,” since it meets all criteria for a name change - most importantly that it be a name in common usage by locals. Lots of people refer to it as “The Gulf,” while “Gulf of America” isn’t in common usage.
The most we can do outside of lawsuits is at least try to take the “America” part away.
I’m going to recommend it be changed to “The Gulf,” since it meets all criteria for a name change - most importantly that it be a name in common usage by locals.
So now when I refer to “The Gulf States”, I’m typically referring to Alabama and Florida and Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
the proper US Board on Geographic Names’s official process not being followed for the name change.
This is the theme of this administration. Doing whatever they want with no regard for process. This gulf of “America” nonsense truly feels like the actions of a believed king or emperor. A frivolous decree that doesn’t change anything, doesn’t materially affect anything, just an opportunity to exercise their believed power.
Let’s name it “the Gulf of America’s pollution”
First, what laws are violated? Doubt international law touches this, US law maybe?
edit: Why the F do you downvote me? This is an honest question. I really dislike Trump, but I don’t see what laws this violates, except maybe US laws regarding the separation of powers-
Reminds me of: Miss Universe… Miss planet… Miss International…
Cancel all government contracts with google
And for the love of god do not switch over to another American company, or any company, go FOSS and decentralized
God I hope this happens, it will be absolutely hilarious when the GCP services on which MX infraestructure for telecommunications, research and development, industry, transportation, banking, agriculture, logistics and health is built up, crashes burning to the ground.
Don’t “threaten”. Any asshole can make a threat. GO AHEAD AND DO IT.
It looks like they’re giving the lawyers time to find legal arguments to file.
Though they could jusr ban Google from their country.
deleted by creator
or we keep american shit inside america. fuck googlemaps, apple and all other shitty US corporations. see, tump will die some day and be forgotten, but people will remember what apple and google did. next time you see someone work for alphabet…spit them in the face. next time an american buys a burger, you spit on it. etc. it is not about actual harm as america is killing itself anyway atm. my bingo card says if trump wins twice, there shall also be two pandemics. maybe protest the egg prices a bit more before using that muri-brain to do sth. against it. americans are just stupid.
What’s dumb about this is that in their jurisdiction (Mexico) it is actually the “Gulf of Mexico” in Google Maps, they don’t get the “Gulf of America” name. In the US it’s labelled as “Gulf of America” without mentioning “Gulf of Mexico” which you could argue Google has to do because it (theoretically) follows national laws everywhere it operates.
That’s why Korean users don’t see the Sea of Japan to their east, they see the East Sea. That’s why in some locations the Persian Gulf is referred to as the Arabian Gulf instead. It’s also why inside India the borders you see for Kashmir don’t match the borders you see for Kashmir if you’re in Pakistan. The rest of the world sees a third version of that area with areas marked as disputed.
What’s really annoying is that every other country in the world is exposed to this “Gulf of America” silliness, even countries where people don’t speak English. I can understand (just barely) having “(Gulf of America)” under “Gulf of Mexico” in English-speaking countries because if someone is hearing news from a US source and they refer to the Gulf of America, it might be useful to know what they’re talking about. It’s in the news now, but in 3 years say you’re a high-school kid trying to do a geography report and can’t find the feature on the map, that could be annoying.
But, this parenthesis rule apparently even extends to Germany, where it’s “Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)”. There’s no reason to include a name that doesn’t exist in your language on your version of the maps app. If I, as an English-maps user look at Germany, I don’t get Munich (Munchen). I don’t get Florence (Firenze), I don’t get India (Bhārat). There’s a long-standing tradition that maps show things in the name that’s local to the map user. Sometimes, over time, a name gets changed to be closer to the way it’s said in the local language, so Peking became Beijing.
Also, google addressed this in a blog post from 2008, almost literally describing this situation:
“How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth … if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage”
Other than the ruler not being female, the body of water being a different one, and “America” not being Donald Trump’s mother, this is the exact situation.
Edit: I guess technically Donald Trump is female.
in their jurisdiction (Mexico) it is actually the “Gulf of Mexico” in Google Maps, they don’t get the “Gulf of America” name.
I’m in Europe and for me it says “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”. 🥴
I’ve heard that in Germany it’s “Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)”. That’s really annoying. I can vaguely understand it having the parenthesized name in English. Say in 3 years some kid in England is doing a report about something in the US and the Gulf of America comes up. Maybe you’d want the kid to be able to find it on the map. But, maybe it’s fine if the kid has to look it up somewhere else, realize that’s the stupid name, then search for Gulf of Amerikkka.
But, it doesn’t make any sense to do that for other languages. Just like we don’t get Finland (Suomi) when searching for Finland, Finns shouldn’t get something like Meksikonlahti (Gulf of America). They aren’t going to be exposed to / hearing the Finnish translation of the English name, so it’s not helpful in any way to have that parenthesized version.
While we are at renaming things…
Don’t even bother with a pointless lawsuit. Simply stop using Google.
Nah, they’re a megacorp, you gotta hurt them where it counts - in their bottom line. Make them use their super expensive lawyers to defend this shit. Honestly more people/entities should do this. Even pro se, these corporate lawyers cost these companies literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to go into court. Just imagine how much you could cost them if everyone started suing them for any little thing. Even a response to a lawsuit requires a lawyer, which requires time and effort.
Its literally the only thing they care about - money. Strongly worded letters and protests aren’t enough. They can ignore those.
Google is worth more than Mexico. A frivolous lawsuit, which is what this would be, will hurt Mexico more.
have we (the human race) ever been to this point before? where corporations are big enough to absorb whole countries and there’s pretty much nobody who’ll stand up to them?
The East India Company is the first example that comes to mind. I’m sure others.
I really don’t think we are living through unprecedented times, unfortunately. People have sucked for as long as we’ve existed.
I can see Google (and Apple) quietly paying a fine and changing it for Mexico (and any other jurisdiction that specifically asks).
This is stupid and cowardly of them, but that aside, the implication is 100% “comply, or the US government will make life difficult for Google.” I can see how they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Nah, they’re willing collaborators.
I legitimately don’t understand why the U.S. isn’t the only locality where it shows up as “Gulf of America”.
Set the en-US string to “Gulf of America”. Leave literally every other region’s text string untouched from what it was 6 months ago.
When the next Democrat U.S. President gets sworn in and immediately Executive Orders it back to “Gulf of Mexico”, change the en-US string back to that.
This is all so stupid and melodramatic.
This is all so stupid and melodramatic.
That’s the point!
This is stupid and cowardly of them,
What else did you expect?
Step two of the plan you outlined was inverted by Google, but the effect is the same: IIRC it only shows up that way for US users.
Edit: apparently that was either a lie or incomplete info, see comments elsewhere in this thread.
IIRC it only shows up that way for US users.
apparently that was either a lie or incomplete info
Where’d you first hear this?
Not judging, just curious about the information chain.
I can confirm that it shows up as both for me. I’m not in US or Mexico, and it shows as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”. The info I saw was that it shows as GoA in the US, GoM in Mexico, and both everywhere else. At least 2 of those are true, I’m guessing all 3 are
Can confirm it’s both here in Canada where we’re not supposed to be a part of this insanity
Reporting about how the maps team reclassified the US as a “sensitive country”, a la: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/28/google-reclassifies-us-as-sensitive-country-like-china-russia-.html
Since when is the big tech the arbiter of truth? It might come as a surprise to you, but Google and Apple don’t care about your holy war against Trump.
You think Google and Apple should call it the Gulf of America?
I think Google and Apple should call it whatever the official names are, not to take any sort of political stance.
Then why add “Gulf of America” in countries that do not recognize the name?
In case you have forgotten, Google is an American company, every one of their decisions is taken in California. Maybe calling everything you don’t agree “fascist” isn’t a smart idea, since it shows that you have no idea what the meaning of that word is.
That is not what I asked.
OK, let’s reverse it, and say Mexico renamed the Gulf to something else. What do you think Google should do, inside Mexico and out?
Inside Mexico they should name it whatever the Mexico calls it. Outside Mexico it should be called however it is called in the respective country.
But again, Google is based in the US, all their decisions are made there.
The official name is the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn’t become a different name just because Trump declares it. It isn’t up to him.
It already does
The new name shows only for USA. In Mexico it’s unchanged, or shown with both names.
Our president is dumb and just wants to look like she’s fighting back without actually doing anything significant.
It’s showing up worldwide. Its why Mexico is threatening to sue.
Showing with both names does not make it any better and I’m not sure why you think it does. They’re just kowtowing to a unilateral decision made by one of the multiple countries that border the Gulf of Mexico.
I assume you would not want Taiwan to be called Chinese Taipei on Google Maps despite China calling it that.
Woah, who said I’m fine with that? I’m Mexican and very much resent the idiocy of Trump, but our president is also an idiot who “threatens” to do something, but I can assure you she will not actually do anything.
IMO she’s posturing to her base, but she says she might go against Google because she doesn’t dare to go against Trump, and she needs to look like she’s doing something.
Meanwhile, we have very urgent problems in Mexico like rampant crime, medicine scarcity, corruption, etc. that she doesn’t even mention in her daily morning speeches.
