Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps.
Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps.
Mexican President urges Google to reconsider renaming the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' on its maps feature at Trump's demand, and threatens legal action.
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.
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.
Republicans are so good at baiting liberals into useless bullshit arguments, while they plunder stuff that actually matters.
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.
Who should care about annoying petty stuff to make a political point? Wether it's the orange clown trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the little unwashed cokehead making a point of calling Kiev Kiyv. I'm surprised Google, that is100% a US regime tool didn't rename that Chinese province already.
Did you really just call Taiwan a Chinese province?
I prefer the name "golfo del gringo loco"
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.
his name is now tump
Tumpthumbing
Ive been already boycotting google, amazon, facebook, reddit. Yall need to get on it
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
Yeah its actually insane how far Googles reach has gotten
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.
We did it with Lemmy. It CAN be done!
If you disapprove of internet companies caving to authoritarian politics, I have bad news for you about Yandex
Yeah its true unfortunately
Well, the continent was named America, not the Mexico continent. So the name Gulf of America just sounds right. It's not like the name changed to the Gulf of US.
Following your logic Lake Michigan should be renamed Lake America. There's a bunch of lakes up there, do they all get renamed Lake of America? Seems confusing!
Here's a list of all the gulfs in the Americas:
North America
- Gulf of Mexico
- Gulf of Alaska
- Gulf of California (Sea of Cortes)
- Gulf of St. Lawrence
- Gulf of Honduras
- Gulf of Panama
- Gulf of Tehuantepec
Central and South America
- Gulf of Darien (Colombia and Panama)
- Gulf of Venezuela
- Gulf of Guayaquil (Ecuador)
Following your logic, they're all badly named because that's just named after the region they're in, not the content.
I thought it was called North America?
Yeah, "America".
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.
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)". 🥴
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.
Uninstalled 👍
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).
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"
Reminds me of: Miss Universe.. Miss planet.. Miss International..
First, what laws are violated? Doubt international law touches this, US law maybe?
Can someone just make a mod or something for g-maps to name all American names to like Spanish ones? Nuevo York, Guashintón Distrito de Columbia, that kinda stuff.
Just access GMaps through your VPN through Mexico, and your wildest dreams can come true.
Guayinton or Guallinton fits better
Just call it the Gulf of Fuck The Environment, We're Getting Rich!
Sponsored by BP
...Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
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.
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.
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.
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".
Out with the oldspeak. In with the newspeak.
Reality has to BE.
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!!
See, I learned this in Spanish class in my American high school, and I don't think that linguistic fact stuck with me! Thanks
I always wondered why it had double letters. Thank you!
Just let our mexican and Canadian neighbors take over the USA. We've proven to be unworthy of making wise choices.
That rule existed in Portuguese as well, but they dropped that as indication of plurality is just... wasteful
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.
It's a US company following US policy as it's a contract holder for the US Government they're compelled to follow US policy. Whether anyone likes it or not, at least for right now, US policy is that the Gulf of Mexico for all intents and purposes is the Gulf of America.
President Sheinbaum can sue Google all she wants, but there's no court that's going to find that a US company complying with US policy is breaking the law.
It’s a US company following US policy as it’s a contract holder for the US Government they’re compelled to follow US policy. Whether anyone likes it or not, at least for right now, US policy is that the Gulf of Mexico for all intents and purposes is the Gulf of America.
We have a bunch of amendments...go look at the first.
I think you KNOW it's because Pichai was there and is part of that club now.
The executive order doesn't conflict with anyone's freedom of speech... The President didn't release an executive order saying "no one is allowed to call it the Gulf of Mexico anymore!"
I'm not going to type it all out again, but here you go: https://lemm.ee/post/55471251/18276179
So you are gonna have to provide a source explaining how the president using an executive order to rename international water is "policy" that Google must follow.
They you'll have to explain why I, as a Canadian, have to see this stupid renaming in parentheses.
If the US truely doesn't have a system beyond "once the president orders it, it's renamed." That's their problem but I don't give a fuck what they call things and I don't know why google thinks I should.
So you are gonna have to provide a source explaining how the president using an executive order to rename international water is “policy” that Google must follow.
It's the executive branch. It would be the same as if Congress did the same, and passed a law saying "The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America." There's no source required, it's literally how the US Government works, but if you want one; American University Law Review (2009) - The Limits of Executive Power:
The President has broad discretion in choosing how to exercise these implied powers. Second, these implied powers are not plenary in nature. They are subject to three basic limitations: (1) the President may not, without congressional authorization, use these powers to change domestic law or create or alter existing legal obligations; (2) these powers are subject to regulation by Congress; and (3) in the event of a conflict between the exercise of these powers and congressional legislation, the latter prevails.
There's no federal law establishing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, so there's no conflict with the first limitation. No one in Congress is willing to stop him, so no conflict with the second. And there's no conflict with existing congressional legislation, so there's no conflict with the third. So therefore the executive order is within the power of the executive branch.
Because Google is a US company and operates within the US, it has to follow US policy. The President just changed US policy to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico... So they either have to comply or be sued by the executive for not following US policy--which they'll lose.
They you’ll have to explain why I, as a Canadian, have to see this stupid renaming in parentheses.
Because again, Google is a US company. So if you want to see Gulf of Mexico again, use any map provider that isn't from a US company.
If the US truely doesn’t have a system beyond “once the president orders it, it’s renamed.”
That's an extreme oversimplification of what's going on here. But it kinda outlines how important it is to elect good people, huh?
You could be wrong. While possibly justified on Google's part, Mexico will most likely sue its Mexican affiliate, and if Google wishes to operate in Mexico, it will have to comply with orders from Mexican courts. See twitter and Brazil for similar case.
That's fully within the right of Mexico as a country, but that has nothing to do with anything that I've said here.
Going forward, the official US policy (because of this executive order) is that it's the Gulf of America. No amount of suing Google will change that.
Actually the executive order only renames the parts that the US controls, and they don't control the entire gulf
It doesn't "rename" anything. It means the official US position is that the Gulf of Mexico doesn't exist and instead it's the Gulf of America. It's not forcing anyone to call it that other than for official purposes--like in Governmental memos and official US documents--least of all foreign Governments or their people.
The US doesn't own the Gulf. We can't unilaterally change the name. But when the US Government officially refers to the Gulf, it will now be called the Gulf of America. That's what the executive order did.
President of mexico is just showing themselves to be as big of a baby as trump. Best thing to do is ignore it. Its of such little importance.
Senkaku Islands are the center of a dispute between Japan and China, both claim them, both have names for them. Wikipedia goes more in depth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands
On google maps we get...
So it's not like they can't give stuff multiple names.
That's what YOU get since you're neither in China nor Japan. They only get to see their relative government's name. China in fact gets to see nothing since they block Google, but it you happen to be in Hong Kong or Macau, you would.
Do it honey. Make em pay for suckin orange ass
Yeah!! Spend your money on a completely pointless lawsuit!! Fill some lawyers pockets instead of helping your citizens!!
Remember: the most important thing to professional politicians is optics! It's what fools the morons into thinking you are doing something good!
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.
So why did google change it in Canada?
Because Google is actuvely pushing US government agenda into Canada. It should be considered an extension of the US government as far as other countries are concerned, but it's a corporation so nobody cares. Google WILL assist in taking Canada the best they can, so I guess Canada can just enjoy it or whatever instead of doing something about it.
Whenever I see Gulf of America mentioned, in my head it sounds like "This is America" in the Childish Gambino song.
Gulf of America, don't catch you shippin now, look where I'm fishin now, potus be trippin yo (woo), gulf of america
😄
What I see is "Gulf of Swastika". A name dictated by an authoritarian Nazi without proper procedure, that symbolizes the Trump administration.
Again, this is one of the dumbest fucking wastes of money I've ever seen. Waste of labor from the top down. Waste of resources. This is purely a pride move. It's the gulf of Mexico and always has been. There are American songs about the gulf of Mexico. It's history. I have said it before and I'll say it again, I fucking hate this timeline. This shit is wild. This stuff now days is a mockery of our world.
Look we're wasting our hard earned tax payer money on crazy fraudulent things like science, education, weather, feeding children, helping the poor, medicine... Dumb things like that. And you're gonna tell me that changing the name of a body of water to include the greatest God damn country in America is a waste? Next thing you know you're gonna stand there and tell me that poor people should be able to afford a hospital visit.
Republicans are full of it anyway.
Study after study has shown that a nationalized healthcare system increases a nation's GDP in the long run. After all, people who are unable to work due to sickness or death that were caused by preventable condition, don't pay taxes.
For everyone else, not having to pay for private health care gives them more disposable income. Which means they spend it on other things which makes businesses more profitable.
The word "America" is not reserved for the USA alone and belongs to the entire Americas: North America, Central America, South America. As such if they want to rename the Gulf of Mexico then it should be the Gulf of North America of which both the USA and Mexico are a part of and share borders around that body of water.
Furthermore the word "America" isn't an English word but the German bastardization of an Italian word. Specifically the word "America" was coined by Martin Waldseemüller a German cartographer who named the Americas after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who explored the new continents for Spain and Portugal. So I guess the Gulf of North Amerigo is more accurate. LOL.
Amerigo Vespucci - History Cartoon ~ Innovative History ~ YouTube.
In any case, if this is the big orange blow-fish's attempt to dis on Mexico then it's pretty petty much like everything he does to massage his massive ego.
So it's the gulf of Germany. Got it. Ü
VW Golf.
Grab em by the vespussi
Salud.
The US keeps it to flex on all the other American countries. It's a display of dominance.
You wanna know what’s cool about language? It changes over time. So while the origin of a word may mean one thing, it can eventually mean something else as well or even something entirely different. Cool used to just mean temperature, but it eventually also came to refer to the attitude of a person or even how likable they are in common usage. Nimrod was a mythical hunter but thanks to Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd now means a stupid person. Same with “America” referring originally a set of continents. In common usage it has come to mean referencing the United States of America, mostly because people are lazy and is so much easier to say “American” than it is to describe something as “from the United States of America”. You can resist the change all you want, but eventually you sound like some old person that says automobile instead of car since car originally meant an individual portion of a train.
Less threatening... More doing.
The U.S. dictatorship are just doing and they're slowly tearing apart OUR planet.
Bro, are you ok? "US dictayorship"? Trump was elected by the majority of Americans. How is Trump destroying YOUR planet? By changing the name of the gulf? Is this the biggest problem "your" planet has?
Fukin soypeople...
You need actual therapy
He literally said he would be a dictator if elected.
Maybe pay attention rather than hurl silly insults.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Implying people enjoy soy is an insult. Ouch! My feelings.
I never said Dictayorship. Because that's terrible spelling of the only word you needed to spell correctly to actually criticise me. I also never linked the mislabeling of the Gulf as destroying the planet. He is though...
He proclaimed that he will "OWN" Gaza through means of literal ethnic cleansing. He's conspiring with Putin to help finalise his invasion of eastern Ukraine. He's currently purging the Government of minorities and people he deems unloyal. Elon Musk is infiltrating and tearing up government departments as an unelected right-hand entity. His right-wing army are, by algorithm, shifting the western world easily into fascism. I could go on but I'm done with you.
Bottom line... pay attention.
Also... the fact that you put forward Trump was elected by majority of Americans is a straight out lie. Grow up.
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.
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.
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.
It’s showing up worldwide. Its why Mexico is threatening to sue.
Restrict Google from doing business.in the country altogether.
Have phones switch to some open non Google platform
Fuck google, microsoft, apple, they're all evil at this point
As a mexican I second this thought
I'm curious - how would they just "have phones switch", and if that's actually possible, to which "open non Google platform"?
Some android phones can run graphene OS, which is a privacy fork of android if I understand it correctly. Regulation to open bootloaders from manufacturers wanting to sell in the Mexican market would probably be possible. Might be the only good thing to come out of this if countries start regulating openness.
Come on, guys. You have drug cartels. Surely they have a guy named Luigi. Doesn't Trump want to declare war on Mexico or some insane shit like that?
You have drug cartels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking_allegations
Everyone has drug cartels. The US doesn't even make thr top 20 tho.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-countries-highest-number-drug-220037331.html
Don't sue- just threaten to block some of googles services in your country and they'll come around real quick. Hit em where it hurts. Google isn't hurting for lawyers.
You have to hit them in the wallet. Every time Trump does or says anything about tariffs, just starting increasing tariffs on all Tesla products.
We can't hit Trump directly but we can hit his little friends quite easily.
Musk will have an absolute meltdown on twitter of course, but if you just ignore him he'll give up. He's already shown that he is prepared to back down if he's actually facing financial penalties.
Tragically we have a dried apricot ceding power to the highest bidder. There isn't much for other countries to do directly unless they are paying for "sock puppet time" or getting in a pissing match with a clown that makes a juggalo look smart.
This is more about controlling (collateral) damage: in this case megacorps "kissing the ring" via stupid shit like Google is doing presently. Countries can fuck with corporations far easier than we can (guess who paid for sock puppet time...)
Google is clearly attempting to make themselves more "saleable" to the ruling party by dropping things like month names or renaming universally accepted names of global features. Right now their -baseline- is where we are at currently. A lawsuit does next to nothing. It's an operating cost. A country threatening to blacklist their service will hit them cleanly in the only thing that matters: their shareholders. Our biggest corporations have time and again rolled over for this tactic. They may have elevated themselves to a godlike status within the states but they are vulnerable outside our shores.
I stopped using everything Google. Fascist collaborators won't get a dime of my money, won't get my eyeballs on any of their ads, and won't get a single kilobyte of data from me to sell for profit.
I'll keep my gmail account open because all it really does is accumulate spam which probably costs them money.
So you stopped using an iPhone too? Because Apple also renamed the gulf in their maps app.
Is Symbian still good these days?
If anyone is still buying Apple products after the whole slowing phones down the thing and the soldered ram thing and that you can't fix your own phone thing and the oh you can fix your phone if you use our equipment except our equipment is really expensive and actually you can't get it thing, then there's something wrong with you.
I also don't buy Crapple products either, but that's a personal choice.
Save your old maps for when this shit has to be reversed in 4 years unless the voters elect another republican troglodyte.
I hope they're so screwed over and see no real progress come next election because many are being affected, that's for sure. They'll reap the shittier half of what they sowed.
Thing is, the next MAGA/QAnon nutter will just tell people that it's the lib's fault and they will eat it up and vote for the next unhinged, cleptocratic sociopath. Or maybe by then the US will have gone full Russia and just openly manipulate the elections
Don’t forget apple
PLEASE.DO IT
Maybe this is the thing that finally unites the cartels.
It is labeled Gulf of Mexico in Mexico and the name doesn't mean they own it. This is almost as ridiculous as calling it Gulf of America in the first place
This is what I see in England. Why should I have to see what Trump thinks the Gulf's name is when it wasn't renamed here?
Because it's relevant to the region you're looking at and I'm pretty sure the UK hasn't taken a firm/legal stance either way. Also not sure how your comment is supposed to relate to my point? Mexico doesn't have any more right to tell other countries what to call the Gulf than the US or any other country that's totally outside of any sane jurisdiction
I'm in tijuana about 10 miles south of the border and it shows as Gulf of America
You're probably connected to a US access point or have cached map data.
https://blog.google/products/maps/united-states-geographic-name-change-feb-2025/
FUCK YEAH, DO IT DO IT FUCKING DO IT! Please sue the fuck outta those shitfucks!
This is stupid. Google is doing it with their normal process, labeling the USA as a sensitive country in their system and
changing the label only for the sensitive snowflakes. So there is no harm to Mexicans in Mexico.(this was wrong, it's show globally in parenthesis, see below)What sort of damages would she assert anyway? That her country suffers in a significant way from a Google Maps label that can only be seen from the sensitive country? How so?
And if it's a political move what is she hoping to achieve? Google will never cave to the USA before Mexico, they depend more on their US operations than their Mexican ones. So she can't achieve anything politically. Does she want to draw even more attention to a losing fight? A losing fight over mere symbolism no less? Why?
The Gulf of America label can be seen worldwide as it's Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)
Oh, sorry. You're right. I was wrong on that point. I didn't realize it showed the sensitive label in parenthesis to others.
I would maintain the rest of the argument though, with the Mexican (and global) point of view being the more prominently displayed, there is no significant harm, and she doesn't stand to gain anything from pursuing a civil case, nor politically.
class action please, so we can let our powers combine
Your issue is with the fed gov, or what is left of it
I thought they just did that in the US
It's Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) outside of the USA and just Gulf of Mexico in Mexico. Absolute insanity
if im not mistaken, i think i heard google pulls the data from some external database, which changed the name. google didnt change shit, rather the database they use did.
i could be wrong, but i could have sworn i read that somewhere.
also seems rather petty to me to sue an american company for following US policy changes.
to be clear, i think the gulf of america thing is stupid as hell, and petty on trump's part.
US policy doesn't get to dictate how websites operate in non US jurisdiction. The US acting like it gets to bully the rest world into doing whatever it wants is the whole issue at hand. That's the point: the trump admin wants to use US influence to intimidate, bully, and antagonize other countries by disrespecting their sovereignty.
yes, i agree. but look at the link i posted. they still show it as gulf of mexico if you're in mexico accessing maps.
my point is more that the US has changed the name of the gulf in the US. it is very stupid and meaningless, but it is still officially renamed.
if i look at japan in google maps it says japan, not nipon. why? because that's what we call it here. i personally think thats dumb too. we should call countries things by their real names. deutschland, bharat, suomi, etc
nevertheless the gulf is called the gulf of america here, no matter how dumb that is.
i seriously doubt google, who is under active investigation for monopoly and being threatened to be broken up, AND, recently lifted its ban on using its ai in weapons, is interested in keeping the old name of the gulf in protest against trump.
again, i think this entire situation is stupid, and would prefer everyone call it the gulf of mexico, but i also don't think google specifically is doing anything wrong in this specific instance. google is doing plenty else wrong that matters much more.
US policy doesn’t get to dictate how websites operate in non US jurisdiction
It shows gulf of Mexico outside of the US
found an article for whoever downvoted me lol.
Gulf of America name change in the U.S. — what you’ll see in Maps
I just do not understand what the big deal is about the name of this fucking thing. I understand trump trying to change it out of nowhere is dumb as fuck, but who cares? why go through the stress? Like just rename it something without a countries name in it. Like the Gulf of Jeff or something. Nobodies butthurt about this shit that don’t matter then.
The leading theory over this seems to be they're trying to invalidate a bunch of international/national agreements about the gulf of Mexico because now "that doesn't exist", or is not about this gulf that has a different name so definitely not the one from agreement. And of course there's also things about doing everything at once and getting people distracted by these while sneaking in harmful policies.
I assumed it was the second one, but the first one there also sounds plausible.
It's the very first piece of getting their violent base behind imperialism
It's stupid, but it's not that extreme. Countries have different names for things. For example, Germany calls the Baltic Sea "Ostsee" (lit. east sea) and Lake Constance 'Bodensee" (lit. bottom sea) but those things are only at the bottom and east for Germany.
China calls Taiwan "Chinese Taipei." Should Google Maps show "Taiwan (Chinese Taipei)" on maps? Because I don't see how that would be China's call any more than the name of the Gulf would be Trump's call.
Is there Google maps in China? If there is, I'd be surprised if it didn't say that. That is claiming ownership. Countries can't own a gulf beyond the domestic waters convention. But, I don't know, that's a good question because a regular Chinese person would just be confused. It wouldn't effect any policy change
There's a slight difference in that "Ostsee" is the common name. If the German chancellor decides to call it "Deutsche See" tomorrow, the name would continue to be "Ostsee", because that's how language usually works.
"Gulf of America" is just a dictator's wish of a common name. The people of OpenStreetMap decided to use the tag "official_name:en_US" for that reason, while keeping "Gulf of Mexico" for the commonly used "name:en-US".
I'm positive that exact thing happened. I'm sure those were not the common names throughout history. At some point, people named things from their perspective iegardless of what others, including those living adjacent to the thing called it. I'll give you the nationalistic part; that's the stupid part, but it's not uncommon to have a name from a different perspective
Google are an American company, and the government of the USA has changed the name. What else do people expect them to do?
Besides, it still say Gulf of Mexico if you're outside the USA.
It shows up as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" outside of the US apparently. That seems like enough to make a fuss to me; bodies of international water have specific rules around name changes and the US can't unilaterally decide differently.
If there existed any valid reasoning for the change... 🤷♂️
But the Felon Dicktater is only doing it so he can claim himself architect of global geographic change. Same reason he wants Greenland, Panama, Gaza, etc.
Fuck that.
I back Sheinbaum on this one. Won't matter, but do it anyway.
Dicktater brought to mind very unpleasant images
He wants to seize Greenland, Panama and Canada because they are either strategically important or have valuable resources, or both (and, in the case of Canada, because he wants revenge on Trudeau for being "woke" and standing up to his ape-dominance handshakes). This name change though is just because he hates Mexicans.
I hope that along with the next president's EO (assuming we don't have a dictator) to change the name back, it also changes the name of a tiny garbage parcel of land that's uninhabitable due to lead or an old chemical spill to something like "greasy orange fief".
What else do people expect them to do?
1.- Refuse-
2.- Apply only the part of the name change that's actually covered by US jurisdiction. The Gulf of Mexico extends noticeably beyond US's borders.
But hey this is Google we're talking about.
Besides, it still say Gulf of Mexico if you’re outside the USA.
If I'm a eg.: Colombian, it should be
"Gulf of Mexico""Golfo de México" wherever I stand, not "Gulf of America".Apply only the part of the name change that’s actually covered by US jurisdiction.
Strictly speaking, per the EO, this is what they should have done. The EO defines the area to be renamed as:
the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico
You can see exactly where that seaward boundary is on this map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_ECS_Regions_2023.png
The area described is less than half the whole Gulf of Mexico.
